Dream Psychology

Freud, Sigmund
(Translator: M. D. Eder)

Published: 1920
Type(s): Non-Fiction, Psychology
Source: [Link]

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About Freud:
Sigmund Freud (born Sigismund Schlomo Freud) May 6, 1856 –
September 23, 1939; was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who
co-founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is best
known for his theories of the unconscious mind, especially involving the
mechanism of repression; his redefinition of sexual desire as mobile and
directed towards a wide variety of objects; and his therapeutic tech-
niques, especially his understanding of transference in the therapeutic
relationship and the presumed value of dreams as sources of insight into
unconscious desires. He is commonly referred to as "the father of psy-
choanalysis" and his work has been highly influential-—popularizing
such notions as the unconscious, defense mechanisms, Freudian slips
and dream symbolism — while also making a long-lasting impact on
fields as diverse as literature (Kafka), film, Marxist and feminist theories,
literary criticism, philosophy, and psychology. However, his theories re-
main controversial and widely disputed. Source: Wikipedia

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Introduction
The medical profession is justly conservative. Human life should not be
considered as the proper material for wild experiments.
Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds,
loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.
Remember the scornful reception which first was accorded to Freud's
discoveries in the domain of the unconscious.
When after years of patient observations, he finally decided to appear
before medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which always
recurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first laughed at
and then avoided as a crank.
The words "dream interpretation" were and still are indeed fraught
with unpleasant, unscientific associations. They remind one of all sorts of
childish, superstitious notions, which make up the thread and woof of
dream books, read by none but the ignorant and the primitive.
The wealth of detail, the infinite care never to let anything pass unex-
plained, with which he presented to the public the result of his investiga-
tions, are impressing more and more serious-minded scientists, but the
examination of his evidential data demands arduous work and presup-
poses an absolutely open mind.
This is why we still encounter men, totally unfamiliar with Freud's
writings, men who were not even interested enough in the subject to at-
tempt an interpretation of their dreams or their patients' dreams, derid-
ing Freud's theories and combatting them with the help of statements
which he never made.
Some of them, like Professor Boris Sidis, reach at times conclusions
which are strangely similar to Freud's, but in their ignorance of psycho-
analytic literature, they fail to credit Freud for observations antedating
theirs.
Besides those who sneer at dream study, because they have never
looked into the subject, there are those who do not dare to face the facts
revealed by dream study. Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological
truth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on such a diet.
Self-deception is a plant which withers fast in the pellucid atmosphere of
dream investigation.

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 The weakling and the neurotic attached to his neurosis are not anxious
to turn such a powerful searchlight upon the dark corners of their
psychology.
Freud's theories are anything but theoretical.
He was moved by the fact that there always seemed to be a close con-
nection between his patients' dreams and their mental abnormalities, to
collect thousands of dreams and to compare them with the case histories
in his possession.
He did not start out with a preconceived bias, hoping to find evidence
which might support his views. He looked at facts a thousand times
"until they began to tell him something."
His attitude toward dream study was, in other words, that of a statisti-
cian who does not know, and has no means of foreseeing, what conclu-
sions will be forced on him by the information he is gathering, but who
is fully prepared to accept those unavoidable conclusions.
This was indeed a novel way in psychology. Psychologists had always
been wont to build, in what Bleuler calls "autistic ways," that is through
methods in no wise supported by evidence, some attractive hypothesis,
which sprung from their brain, like Minerva from Jove's brain, fully
armed.
After which, they would stretch upon that unyielding frame the hide
of a reality which they had previously killed.
It is only to minds suffering from the same distortions, to minds also
autistically inclined, that those empty, artificial structures appear accept-
able molds for philosophic thinking.
The pragmatic view that "truth is what works" had not been as yet ex-
pressed when Freud published his revolutionary views on the psycho-
logy of dreams.
Five facts of first magnitude were made obvious to the world by his in-
terpretation of dreams.
First of all, Freud pointed out a constant connection between some
part of every dream and some detail of the dreamer's life during the pre-
vious waking state. This positively establishes a relation between sleep-
ing states and waking states and disposes of the widely prevalent view
that dreams are purely nonsensical phenomena coming from nowhere
and leading nowhere.
Secondly, Freud, after studying the dreamer's life and modes of
thought, after noting down all his mannerisms and the apparently

4
insignificant details of his conduct which reveal his secret thoughts,
came to the conclusion that there was in every dream the attempted or
successful gratification of some wish, conscious or unconscious.
Thirdly, he proved that many of our dream visions are symbolical,
which causes us to consider them as absurd and unintelligible; the uni-
versality of those symbols, however, makes them very transparent to the
trained observer.
Fourthly, Freud showed that sexual desires play an enormous part in
our unconscious, a part which puritanical hypocrisy has always tried to
minimize, if not to ignore entirely.
Finally, Freud established a direct connection between dreams and in-
sanity, between the symbolic visions of our sleep and the symbolic ac-
tions of the mentally deranged.
There were, of course, many other observations which Freud made
while dissecting the dreams of his patients, but not all of them present as
much interest as the foregoing nor were they as revolutionary or likely to
wield as much influence on modern psychiatry.
Other explorers have struck the path blazed by Freud and leading into
man's unconscious. Jung of Zurich, Adler of Vienna and Kempf of Wash-
ington, D.C., have made to the study of the unconscious, contributions
which have brought that study into fields which Freud himself never
dreamt of invading.
One fact which cannot be too emphatically stated, however, is that but
for Freud's wishfulfillment theory of dreams, neither Jung's "energic the-
ory," nor Adler's theory of "organ inferiority and compensation," nor
Kempf's "dynamic mechanism" might have been formulated.
Freud is the father of modern abnormal psychology and he established
the psychoanalytical point of view. No one who is not well grounded in
Freudian lore can hope to achieve any work of value in the field of
psychoanalysis.
On the other hand, let no one repeat the absurd assertion that
Freudism is a sort of religion bounded with dogmas and requiring an act
of faith. Freudism as such was merely a stage in the development of psy-
choanalysis, a stage out of which all but a few bigoted camp followers,
totally lacking in originality, have evolved. Thousands of stones have
been added to the structure erected by the Viennese physician and many
more will be added in the course of time.

5
 But the new additions to that structure would collapse like a house of
cards but for the original foundations which are as indestructible as
Harvey's statement as to the circulation of the blood.
Regardless of whatever additions or changes have been made to the
original structure, the analytic point of view remains unchanged.
That point of view is not only revolutionising all the methods of dia-
gnosis and treatment of mental derangements, but compelling the
intelligent, up-to-date physician to revise entirely his attitude to almost
every kind of disease.
The insane are no longer absurd and pitiable people, to be herded in
asylums till nature either cures them or relieves them, through death, of
their misery. The insane who have not been made so by actual injury to
their brain or nervous system, are the victims of unconscious forces
which cause them to do abnormally things which they might be helped
to do normally.
Insight into one's psychology is replacing victoriously sedatives and
rest cures.
Physicians dealing with "purely" physical cases have begun to take in-
to serious consideration the "mental" factors which have predisposed a
patient to certain ailments.
Freud's views have also made a revision of all ethical and social values
unavoidable and have thrown an unexpected flood of light upon literary
and artistic accomplishment.
But the Freudian point of view, or more broadly speaking, the psycho-
analytic point of view, shall ever remain a puzzle to those who, from
laziness or indifference, refuse to survey with the great Viennese the
field over which he carefully groped his way. We shall never be con-
vinced until we repeat under his guidance all his laboratory experiments.
We must follow him through the thickets of the unconscious, through
the land which had never been charted because academic philosophers,
following the line of least effort, had decided a priori that it could not be
charted.
Ancient geographers, when exhausting their store of information
about distant lands, yielded to an unscientific craving for romance and,
without any evidence to support their day dreams, filled the blank
spaces left on their maps by unexplored tracts with amusing inserts such
as "Here there are lions."

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 Thanks to Freud's interpretation of dreams the "royal road" into the
unconscious is now open to all explorers. They shall not find lions, they
shall find man himself, and the record of all his life and of his struggle
with reality.
And it is only after seeing man as his unconscious, revealed by his
dreams, presents him to us that we shall understand him fully. For as
Freud said to Putnam: "We are what we are because we have been what
we have been."
Not a few serious-minded students, however, have been discouraged
from attempting a study of Freud's dream psychology.
The book in which he originally offered to the world his interpretation
of dreams was as circumstantial as a legal record to be pondered over by
scientists at their leisure, not to be assimilated in a few hours by the aver-
age alert reader. In those days, Freud could not leave out any detail
likely to make his extremely novel thesis evidentially acceptable to those
willing to sift data.
Freud himself, however, realized the magnitude of the task which the
reading of his magnum opus imposed upon those who have not been
prepared for it by long psychological and scientific training and he ab-
stracted from that gigantic work the parts which constitute the essential
of his discoveries.
The publishers of the present book deserve credit for presenting to the
reading public the gist of Freud's psychology in the master's own words,
and in a form which shall neither discourage beginners, nor appear too
elementary to those who are more advanced in psychoanalytic study.
Dream psychology is the key to Freud's works and to all modern psy-
chology. With a simple, compact manual such as Dream Psychology
there shall be no longer any excuse for ignorance of the most revolution-
ary psychological system of modern times.
ANDRE TRIDON.
121 Madison Avenue, New York.
November, 1920.

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Chapter 1
Dreams have a meaning
In what we may term "prescientific days" people were in no uncertainty
about the interpretation of dreams. When they were recalled after
awakening they were regarded as either the friendly or hostile manifest-
ation of some higher powers, demoniacal and Divine. With the rise of
scientific thought the whole of this expressive mythology was trans-
ferred to psychology; to-day there is but a small minority among edu-
cated persons who doubt that the dream is the dreamer's own psychical
act.
But since the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an interpreta-
tion of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its origin; its rela-
tionship to our psychical life when we are awake; its independence of
disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to compel notice; its
many peculiarities repugnant to our waking thought; the incongruence
between its images and the feelings they engender; then the dream's
evanescence, the way in which, on awakening, our thoughts thrust it
aside as something bizarre, and our reminiscences mutilating or rejecting
it—all these and many other problems have for many hundred years de-
manded answers which up till now could never have been satisfactory.
Before all there is the question as to the meaning of the dream, a question
which is in itself double-sided. There is, firstly, the psychical significance
of the dream, its position with regard to the psychical processes, as to a
possible biological function; secondly, has the dream a meaning—can
sense be made of each single dream as of other mental syntheses?
Three tendencies can be observed in the estimation of dreams. Many
philosophers have given currency to one of these tendencies, one which
at the same time preserves something of the dream's former over-valu-
ation. The foundation of dream life is for them a peculiar state of psych-
ical activity, which they even celebrate as elevation to some higher state.
Schubert, for instance, claims: "The dream is the liberation of the spirit
from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the

8
fetters of matter." Not all go so far as this, but many maintain that
dreams have their origin in real spiritual excitations, and are the out-
ward manifestations of spiritual powers whose free movements have
been hampered during the day ("Dream Phantasies," Scherner, Volkelt).
A large number of observers acknowledge that dream life is capable of
extraordinary achievements—at any rate, in certain fields ("Memory").
In striking contradiction with this the majority of medical writers
hardly admit that the dream is a psychical phenomenon at all. According
to them dreams are provoked and initiated exclusively by stimuli pro-
ceeding from the senses or the body, which either reach the sleeper from
without or are accidental disturbances of his internal organs. The dream
has no greater claim to meaning and importance than the sound called
forth by the ten fingers of a person quite unacquainted with music run-
ning his fingers over the keys of an instrument. The dream is to be re-
garded, says Binz, "as a physical process always useless, frequently mor-
bid." All the peculiarities of dream life are explicable as the incoherent ef-
fort, due to some physiological stimulus, of certain organs, or of the cor-
tical elements of a brain otherwise asleep.
But slightly affected by scientific opinion and untroubled as to the ori-
gin of dreams, the popular view holds firmly to the belief that dreams
really have got a meaning, in some way they do foretell the future,
whilst the meaning can be unravelled in some way or other from its oft
bizarre and enigmatical content. The reading of dreams consists in repla-
cing the events of the dream, so far as remembered, by other events. This
is done either scene by scene, according to some rigid key, or the dream
as a whole is replaced by something else of which it was a symbol.
Serious-minded persons laugh at these efforts—"Dreams are but sea-
foam!"
One day I discovered to my amazement that the popular view groun-
ded in superstition, and not the medical one, comes nearer to the truth
about dreams. I arrived at new conclusions about dreams by the use of a
new method of psychological investigation, one which had rendered me
good service in the investigation of phobias, obsessions, illusions, and
the like, and which, under the name "psycho-analysis," had found ac-
ceptance by a whole school of investigators. The manifold analogies of
dream life with the most diverse conditions of psychical disease in the
waking state have been rightly insisted upon by a number of medical ob-
servers. It seemed, therefore, a priori, hopeful to apply to the interpreta-
tion of dreams methods of investigation which had been tested in psy-
chopathological processes. Obsessions and those peculiar sensations of

9
haunting dread remain as strange to normal consciousness as do dreams
to our waking consciousness; their origin is as unknown to conscious-
ness as is that of dreams. It was practical ends that impelled us, in these
diseases, to fathom their origin and formation. Experience had shown us
that a cure and a consequent mastery of the obsessing ideas did result
when once those thoughts, the connecting links between the morbid
ideas and the rest of the psychical content, were revealed which were
heretofore veiled from consciousness. The procedure I employed for the
interpretation of dreams thus arose from psychotherapy.
This procedure is readily described, although its practice demands in-
struction and experience. Suppose the patient is suffering from intense
morbid dread. He is requested to direct his attention to the idea in ques-
tion, without, however, as he has so frequently done, meditating upon it.
Every impression about it, without any exception, which occurs to him
should be imparted to the doctor. The statement which will be perhaps
then made, that he cannot concentrate his attention upon anything at all,
is to be countered by assuring him most positively that such a blank state
of mind is utterly impossible. As a matter of fact, a great number of im-
pressions will soon occur, with which others will associate themselves.
These will be invariably accompanied by the expression of the observer's
opinion that they have no meaning or are unimportant. It will be at once
noticed that it is this self-criticism which prevented the patient from im-
parting the ideas, which had indeed already excluded them from con-
sciousness. If the patient can be induced to abandon this self-criticism
and to pursue the trains of thought which are yielded by concentrating
the attention, most significant matter will be obtained, matter which will
be presently seen to be clearly linked to the morbid idea in question. Its
connection with other ideas will be manifest, and later on will permit the
replacement of the morbid idea by a fresh one, which is perfectly adap-
ted to psychical continuity.
This is not the place to examine thoroughly the hypothesis upon which
this experiment rests, or the deductions which follow from its invariable
success. It must suffice to state that we obtain matter enough for the res-
olution of every morbid idea if we especially direct our attention to the
unbidden associations which disturb our thoughts—those which are oth-
erwise put aside by the critic as worthless refuse. If the procedure is exer-
cised on oneself, the best plan of helping the experiment is to write down
at once all one's first indistinct fancies.
I will now point out where this method leads when I apply it to the ex-
amination of dreams. Any dream could be made use of in this way. From

10
certain motives I, however, choose a dream of my own, which appears
confused and meaningless to my memory, and one which has the ad-
vantage of brevity. Probably my dream of last night satisfies the require-
ments. Its content, fixed immediately after awakening, runs as follows:
"Company; at table or table d'hôte… . Spinach is served. Mrs. E.L., sit-
ting next to me, gives me her undivided attention, and places her hand
familiarly upon my knee. In defence I remove her hand. Then she says:
'But you have always had such beautiful eyes.'… . I then distinctly see
something like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of a spectacle
lens… ."
This is the whole dream, or, at all events, all that I can remember. It ap-
pears to me not only obscure and meaningless, but more especially odd.
Mrs. E.L. is a person with whom I am scarcely on visiting terms, nor to
my knowledge have I ever desired any more cordial relationship. I have
not seen her for a long time, and do not think there was any mention of
her recently. No emotion whatever accompanied the dream process.
Reflecting upon this dream does not make it a bit clearer to my mind. I
will now, however, present the ideas, without premeditation and
without criticism, which introspection yielded. I soon notice that it is an
advantage to break up the dream into its elements, and to search out the
ideas which link themselves to each fragment.
Company; at table or table d'hôte. The recollection of the slight event
with which the evening of yesterday ended is at once called up. I left a
small party in the company of a friend, who offered to drive me home in
his cab. "I prefer a taxi," he said; "that gives one such a pleasant occupa-
tion; there is always something to look at." When we were in the cab, and
the cab-driver turned the disc so that the first sixty hellers were visible, I
continued the jest. "We have hardly got in and we already owe sixty
hellers. The taxi always reminds me of the table d'hôte. It makes me av-
aricious and selfish by continuously reminding me of my debt. It seems
to me to mount up too quickly, and I am always afraid that I shall be at a
disadvantage, just as I cannot resist at table d'hôte the comical fear that I
am getting too little, that I must look after myself." In far-fetched connec-
tion with this I quote:
"To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go."
Another idea about the table d'hôte. A few weeks ago I was very cross
with my dear wife at the dinner-table at a Tyrolese health resort, because
she was not sufficiently reserved with some neighbors with whom I

11
wished to have absolutely nothing to do. I begged her to occupy herself
rather with me than with the strangers. That is just as if I had been at a
disadvantage at the table d'hôte. The contrast between the behavior of
my wife at the table and that of Mrs. E.L. in the dream now strikes me:
"Addresses herself entirely to me."
Further, I now notice that the dream is the reproduction of a little
scene which transpired between my wife and myself when I was secretly
courting her. The caressing under cover of the tablecloth was an answer
to a wooer's passionate letter. In the dream, however, my wife is re-
placed by the unfamiliar E.L.
Mrs. E.L. is the daughter of a man to whom I owed money! I cannot
help noticing that here there is revealed an unsuspected connection
between the dream content and my thoughts. If the chain of associations
be followed up which proceeds from one element of the dream one is
soon led back to another of its elements. The thoughts evoked by the
dream stir up associations which were not noticeable in the dream itself.
Is it not customary, when some one expects others to look after his in-
terests without any advantage to themselves, to ask the innocent ques-
tion satirically: "Do you think this will be done for the sake of your beau-
tiful eyes?" Hence Mrs. E.L.'s speech in the dream. "You have always had
such beautiful eyes," means nothing but "people always do everything to
you for love of you; you have had everything for nothing." The contrary
is, of course, the truth; I have always paid dearly for whatever kindness
others have shown me. Still, the fact that I had a ride for nothing yester-
day when my friend drove me home in his cab must have made an im-
pression upon me.
In any case, the friend whose guests we were yesterday has often
made me his debtor. Recently I allowed an opportunity of requiting him
to go by. He has had only one present from me, an antique shawl, upon
which eyes are painted all round, a so-called Occhiale, as a charm
against the Malocchio. Moreover, he is an eye specialist. That same even-
ing I had asked him after a patient whom I had sent to him for glasses.
As I remarked, nearly all parts of the dream have been brought into
this new connection. I still might ask why in the dream it was spinach
that was served up. Because spinach called up a little scene which re-
cently occurred at our table. A child, whose beautiful eyes are really de-
serving of praise, refused to eat spinach. As a child I was just the same;
for a long time I loathed spinach, until in later life my tastes altered, and
it became one of my favorite dishes. The mention of this dish brings my

12
own childhood and that of my child's near together. "You should be glad
that you have some spinach," his mother had said to the little gourmet.
"Some children would be very glad to get spinach." Thus I am reminded
of the parents' duties towards their children. Goethe's words—
"To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go"—
take on another meaning in this connection.
Here I will stop in order that I may recapitulate the results of the ana-
lysis of the dream. By following the associations which were linked to
the single elements of the dream torn from their context, I have been led
to a series of thoughts and reminiscences where I am bound to recognize
interesting expressions of my psychical life. The matter yielded by an
analysis of the dream stands in intimate relationship with the dream con-
tent, but this relationship is so special that I should never have been able
to have inferred the new discoveries directly from the dream itself. The
dream was passionless, disconnected, and unintelligible. During the time
that I am unfolding the thoughts at the back of the dream I feel intense
and well-grounded emotions. The thoughts themselves fit beautifully to-
gether into chains logically bound together with certain central ideas
which ever repeat themselves. Such ideas not represented in the dream
itself are in this instance the antitheses selfish, unselfish, to be indebted,
to work for nothing. I could draw closer the threads of the web which
analysis has disclosed, and would then be able to show how they all run
together into a single knot; I am debarred from making this work public
by considerations of a private, not of a scientific, nature. After having
cleared up many things which I do not willingly acknowledge as mine, I
should have much to reveal which had better remain my secret. Why,
then, do not I choose another dream whose analysis would be more suit-
able for publication, so that I could awaken a fairer conviction of the
sense and cohesion of the results disclosed by analysis? The answer is,
because every dream which I investigate leads to the same difficulties
and places me under the same need of discretion; nor should I forgo this
difficulty any the more were I to analyze the dream of some one else.
That could only be done when opportunity allowed all concealment to
be dropped without injury to those who trusted me.
The conclusion which is now forced upon me is that the dream is a
sort of substitution for those emotional and intellectual trains of thought
which I attained after complete analysis. I do not yet know the process
by which the dream arose from those thoughts, but I perceive that it is

13
wrong to regard the dream as psychically unimportant, a purely physical
process which has arisen from the activity of isolated cortical elements
awakened out of sleep.
I must further remark that the dream is far shorter than the thoughts
which I hold it replaces; whilst analysis discovered that the dream was
provoked by an unimportant occurrence the evening before the dream.
Naturally, I would not draw such far-reaching conclusions if only one
analysis were known to me. Experience has shown me that when the as-
sociations of any dream are honestly followed such a chain of thought is
revealed, the constituent parts of the dream reappear correctly and sens-
ibly linked together; the slight suspicion that this concatenation was
merely an accident of a single first observation must, therefore, be abso-
lutely relinquished. I regard it, therefore, as my right to establish this
new view by a proper nomenclature. I contrast the dream which my
memory evokes with the dream and other added matter revealed by ana-
lysis: the former I call the dream's manifest content; the latter, without at
first further subdivision, its latent content. I arrive at two new problems
hitherto unformulated: (1) What is the psychical process which has trans-
formed the latent content of the dream into its manifest content? (2)
What is the motive or the motives which have made such transformation
exigent? The process by which the change from latent to manifest con-
tent is executed I name the dream-work. In contrast with this is the work
of analysis, which produces the reverse transformation. The other prob-
lems of the dream—the inquiry as to its stimuli, as to the source of its
materials, as to its possible purpose, the function of dreaming, the forget-
ting of dreams—these I will discuss in connection with the latent dream-
content.
I shall take every care to avoid a confusion between the manifest and
the latent content, for I ascribe all the contradictory as well as the incor-
rect accounts of dream-life to the ignorance of this latent content, now
first laid bare through analysis.
The conversion of the latent dream thoughts into those manifest de-
serves our close study as the first known example of the transformation
of psychical stuff from one mode of expression into another. From a
mode of expression which, moreover, is readily intelligible into another
which we can only penetrate by effort and with guidance, although this
new mode must be equally reckoned as an effort of our own psychical
activity. From the standpoint of the relationship of latent to manifest
dream-content, dreams can be divided into three classes. We can, in the

14
first place, distinguish those dreams which have a meaning and are, at
the same time, intelligible, which allow us to penetrate into our psychical
life without further ado. Such dreams are numerous; they are usually
short, and, as a general rule, do not seem very noticeable, because
everything remarkable or exciting surprise is absent. Their occurrence is,
moreover, a strong argument against the doctrine which derives the
dream from the isolated activity of certain cortical elements. All signs of
a lowered or subdivided psychical activity are wanting. Yet we never
raise any objection to characterizing them as dreams, nor do we con-
found them with the products of our waking life.
A second group is formed by those dreams which are indeed self-co-
herent and have a distinct meaning, but appear strange because we are
unable to reconcile their meaning with our mental life. That is the case
when we dream, for instance, that some dear relative has died of plague
when we know of no ground for expecting, apprehending, or assuming
anything of the sort; we can only ask ourself wonderingly: "What
brought that into my head?" To the third group those dreams belong
which are void of both meaning and intelligibility; they are incoherent,
complicated, and meaningless. The overwhelming number of our
dreams partake of this character, and this has given rise to the contemp-
tuous attitude towards dreams and the medical theory of their limited
psychical activity. It is especially in the longer and more complicated
dream-plots that signs of incoherence are seldom missing.
The contrast between manifest and latent dream-content is clearly only
of value for the dreams of the second and more especially for those of the
third class. Here are problems which are only solved when the manifest
dream is replaced by its latent content; it was an example of this kind, a
complicated and unintelligible dream, that we subjected to analysis.
Against our expectation we, however, struck upon reasons which pre-
vented a complete cognizance of the latent dream thought. On the repeti-
tion of this same experience we were forced to the supposition that there
is an intimate bond, with laws of its own, between the unintelligible and
complicated nature of the dream and the difficulties attending commu-
nication of the thoughts connected with the dream. Before investigating
the nature of this bond, it will be advantageous to turn our attention to
the more readily intelligible dreams of the first class where, the manifest
and latent content being identical, the dream work seems to be omitted.
The investigation of these dreams is also advisable from another
standpoint. The dreams of children are of this nature; they have a mean-
ing, and are not bizarre. This, by the way, is a further objection to

15
reducing dreams to a dissociation of cerebral activity in sleep, for why
should such a lowering of psychical functions belong to the nature of
sleep in adults, but not in children? We are, however, fully justified in
expecting that the explanation of psychical processes in children, essen-
tially simplified as they may be, should serve as an indispensable pre-
paration towards the psychology of the adult.
I shall therefore cite some examples of dreams which I have gathered
from children. A girl of nineteen months was made to go without food
for a day because she had been sick in the morning, and, according to
nurse, had made herself ill through eating strawberries. During the
night, after her day of fasting, she was heard calling out her name during
sleep, and adding: "Tawberry, eggs, pap." She is dreaming that she is eat-
ing, and selects out of her menu exactly what she supposes she will not
get much of just now.
The same kind of dream about a forbidden dish was that of a little boy
of twenty-two months. The day before he was told to offer his uncle a
present of a small basket of cherries, of which the child was, of course,
only allowed one to taste. He woke up with the joyful news: "Hermann
eaten up all the cherries."
A girl of three and a half years had made during the day a sea trip
which was too short for her, and she cried when she had to get out of the
boat. The next morning her story was that during the night she had been
on the sea, thus continuing the interrupted trip.
A boy of five and a half years was not at all pleased with his party dur-
ing a walk in the Dachstein region. Whenever a new peak came into
sight he asked if that were the Dachstein, and, finally, refused to accom-
pany the party to the waterfall. His behavior was ascribed to fatigue; but
a better explanation was forthcoming when the next morning he told his
dream: he had ascended the Dachstein. Obviously he expected the ascent
of the Dachstein to be the object of the excursion, and was vexed by not
getting a glimpse of the mountain. The dream gave him what the day
had withheld. The dream of a girl of six was similar; her father had cut
short the walk before reaching the promised objective on account of the
lateness of the hour. On the way back she noticed a signpost giving the
name of another place for excursions; her father promised to take her
there also some other day. She greeted her father next day with the news
that she had dreamt that her father had been with her to both places.

16
 What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satis-
fy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are
simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.
The following child-dream, not quite understandable at first sight, is
nothing else than a wish realized. On account of poliomyelitis a girl, not
quite four years of age, was brought from the country into town, and re-
mained over night with a childless aunt in a big—for her, naturally,
huge—bed. The next morning she stated that she had dreamt that the
bed was much too small for her, so that she could find no place in it. To
explain this dream as a wish is easy when we remember that to be "big"
is a frequently expressed wish of all children. The bigness of the bed re-
minded Miss Little-Would-be-Big only too forcibly of her smallness. This
nasty situation became righted in her dream, and she grew so big that
the bed now became too small for her.
Even when children's dreams are complicated and polished, their
comprehension as a realization of desire is fairly evident. A boy of eight
dreamt that he was being driven with Achilles in a war-chariot, guided
by Diomedes. The day before he was assiduously reading about great
heroes. It is easy to show that he took these heroes as his models, and re-
gretted that he was not living in those days.
From this short collection a further characteristic of the dreams of chil-
dren is manifest—their connection with the life of the day. The desires
which are realized in these dreams are left over from the day or, as a
rule, the day previous, and the feeling has become intently emphasized
and fixed during the day thoughts. Accidental and indifferent matters, or
what must appear so to the child, find no acceptance in the contents of
the dream.
Innumerable instances of such dreams of the infantile type can be
found among adults also, but, as mentioned, these are mostly exactly like
the manifest content. Thus, a random selection of persons will generally
respond to thirst at night-time with a dream about drinking, thus striv-
ing to get rid of the sensation and to let sleep continue. Many persons
frequently have these comforting dreams before waking, just when they
are called. They then dream that they are already up, that they are wash-
ing, or already in school, at the office, etc., where they ought to be at a
given time. The night before an intended journey one not infrequently
dreams that one has already arrived at the destination; before going to a
play or to a party the dream not infrequently anticipates, in impatience,
as it were, the expected pleasure. At other times the dream expresses the

17
realization of the desire somewhat indirectly; some connection, some se-
quel must be known—the first step towards recognizing the desire.
Thus, when a husband related to me the dream of his young wife, that
her monthly period had begun, I had to bethink myself that the young
wife would have expected a pregnancy if the period had been absent.
The dream is then a sign of pregnancy. Its meaning is that it shows the
wish realized that pregnancy should not occur just yet. Under unusual
and extreme circumstances, these dreams of the infantile type become
very frequent. The leader of a polar expedition tells us, for instance, that
during the wintering amid the ice the crew, with their monotonous diet
and slight rations, dreamt regularly, like children, of fine meals, of
mountains of tobacco, and of home.
It is not uncommon that out of some long, complicated and intricate
dream one specially lucid part stands out containing unmistakably the
realization of a desire, but bound up with much unintelligible matter. On
more frequently analyzing the seemingly more transparent dreams of
adults, it is astonishing to discover that these are rarely as simple as the
dreams of children, and that they cover another meaning beyond that of
the realization of a wish.
It would certainly be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if
the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaning-
less and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realiz-
ation of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is no
warrant for such an expectation. Their dreams are generally full of the
most indifferent and bizarre matter, and no trace of the realization of the
wish is to be found in their content.
Before leaving these infantile dreams, which are obviously unrealized
desires, we must not fail to mention another chief characteristic of
dreams, one that has been long noticed, and one which stands out most
clearly in this class. I can replace any of these dreams by a phrase ex-
pressing a desire. If the sea trip had only lasted longer; if I were only
washed and dressed; if I had only been allowed to keep the cherries in-
stead of giving them to my uncle. But the dream gives something more
than the choice, for here the desire is already realized; its realization is
real and actual. The dream presentations consist chiefly, if not wholly, of
scenes and mainly of visual sense images. Hence a kind of transforma-
tion is not entirely absent in this class of dreams, and this may be fairly
designated as the dream work. An idea merely existing in the region of
possibility is replaced by a vision of its accomplishment.

18
Chapter 2
The Dream mechanism
We are compelled to assume that such transformation of scene has also
taken place in intricate dreams, though we do not know whether it has
encountered any possible desire. The dream instanced at the commence-
ment, which we analyzed somewhat thoroughly, did give us occasion in
two places to suspect something of the kind. Analysis brought out that
my wife was occupied with others at table, and that I did not like it; in
the dream itself exactly the opposite occurs, for the person who replaces
my wife gives me her undivided attention. But can one wish for any-
thing pleasanter after a disagreeable incident than that the exact contrary
should have occurred, just as the dream has it? The stinging thought in
the analysis, that I have never had anything for nothing, is similarly con-
nected with the woman's remark in the dream: "You have always had
such beautiful eyes." Some portion of the opposition between the latent
and manifest content of the dream must be therefore derived from the
realization of a wish.
Another manifestation of the dream work which all incoherent dreams
have in common is still more noticeable. Choose any instance, and com-
pare the number of separate elements in it, or the extent of the dream, if
written down, with the dream thoughts yielded by analysis, and of
which but a trace can be refound in the dream itself. There can be no
doubt that the dream working has resulted in an extraordinary compres-
sion or condensation. It is not at first easy to form an opinion as to the ex-
tent of the condensation; the more deeply you go into the analysis, the
more deeply you are impressed by it. There will be found no factor in the
dream whence the chains of associations do not lead in two or more dir-
ections, no scene which has not been pieced together out of two or more
impressions and events. For instance, I once dreamt about a kind of
swimming-bath where the bathers suddenly separated in all directions;
at one place on the edge a person stood bending towards one of the
bathers as if to drag him out. The scene was a composite one, made up

19
out of an event that occurred at the time of puberty, and of two pictures,
one of which I had seen just shortly before the dream. The two pictures
were The Surprise in the Bath, from Schwind's Cycle of the Melusine
(note the bathers suddenly separating), and The Flood, by an Italian mas-
ter. The little incident was that I once witnessed a lady, who had tarried
in the swimming-bath until the men's hour, being helped out of the wa-
ter by the swimming-master. The scene in the dream which was selected
for analysis led to a whole group of reminiscences, each one of which
had contributed to the dream content. First of all came the little episode
from the time of my courting, of which I have already spoken; the pres-
sure of a hand under the table gave rise in the dream to the "under the
table," which I had subsequently to find a place for in my recollection.
There was, of course, at the time not a word about "undivided attention."
Analysis taught me that this factor is the realization of a desire through
its contradictory and related to the behavior of my wife at the table
d'hôte. An exactly similar and much more important episode of our
courtship, one which separated us for an entire day, lies hidden behind
this recent recollection. The intimacy, the hand resting upon the knee,
refers to a quite different connection and to quite other persons. This ele-
ment in the dream becomes again the starting-point of two distinct series
of reminiscences, and so on.
The stuff of the dream thoughts which has been accumulated for the
formation of the dream scene must be naturally fit for this application.
There must be one or more common factors. The dream work proceeds
like Francis Galton with his family photographs. The different elements
are put one on top of the other; what is common to the composite picture
stands out clearly, the opposing details cancel each other. This process of
reproduction partly explains the wavering statements, of a peculiar
vagueness, in so many elements of the dream. For the interpretation of
dreams this rule holds good: When analysis discloses uncertainty, as to
either—or read and, taking each section of the apparent alternatives as a
separate outlet for a series of impressions.
When there is nothing in common between the dream thoughts, the
dream work takes the trouble to create a something, in order to make a
common presentation feasible in the dream. The simplest way to approx-
imate two dream thoughts, which have as yet nothing in common, con-
sists in making such a change in the actual expression of one idea as will
meet a slight responsive recasting in the form of the other idea. The pro-
cess is analogous to that of rhyme, when consonance supplies the de-
sired common factor. A good deal of the dream work consists in the

20
creation of those frequently very witty, but often exaggerated, digres-
sions. These vary from the common presentation in the dream content to
dream thoughts which are as varied as are the causes in form and es-
sence which give rise to them. In the analysis of our example of a dream,
I find a like case of the transformation of a thought in order that it might
agree with another essentially foreign one. In following out the analysis I
struck upon the thought: I should like to have something for nothing.
But this formula is not serviceable to the dream. Hence it is replaced by
another one: "I should like to enjoy something free of cost."1 The word
"kost" (taste), with its double meaning, is appropriate to a table d'hôte; it,
moreover, is in place through the special sense in the dream. At home if
there is a dish which the children decline, their mother first tries gentle
persuasion, with a "Just taste it." That the dream work should unhesitat-
ingly use the double meaning of the word is certainly remarkable; ample
experience has shown, however, that the occurrence is quite usual.
Through condensation of the dream certain constituent parts of its con-
tent are explicable which are peculiar to the dream life alone, and which
are not found in the waking state. Such are the composite and mixed per-
sons, the extraordinary mixed figures, creations comparable with the
fantastic animal compositions of Orientals; a moment's thought and
these are reduced to unity, whilst the fancies of the dream are ever
formed anew in an inexhaustible profusion. Every one knows such im-
ages in his own dreams; manifold are their origins. I can build up a per-
son by borrowing one feature from one person and one from another, or
by giving to the form of one the name of another in my dream. I can also
visualize one person, but place him in a position which has occurred to
another. There is a meaning in all these cases when different persons are
amalgamated into one substitute. Such cases denote an "and," a "just
like," a comparison of the original person from a certain point of view, a
comparison which can be also realized in the dream itself. As a rule,
however, the identity of the blended persons is only discoverable by ana-
lysis, and is only indicated in the dream content by the formation of the
"combined" person. The same diversity in their ways of formation and
1."Ich möchte gerne etwas geniessen ohne 'Kosten' zu haben." A a pun upon the
word "kosten," which has two meanings—"taste" and "cost." In "Die Traumdeutung,"
third edition, p. 71 footnote, Professor Freud remarks that "the finest example of
dream interpretation left us by the ancients is based upon a pun" (from "The Inter-
pretation of Dreams," by Artemidorus Daldianus). "Moreover, dreams are so intim-
ately bound up with language that Ferenczi truly points out that every tongue has its
own language of dreams. A dream is as a rule untranslatable into other lan-
guages."—TRANSLATOR.

21
the same rules for its solution hold good also for the innumerable med-
ley of dream contents, examples of which I need scarcely adduce. Their
strangeness quite disappears when we resolve not to place them on a
level with the objects of perception as known to us when awake, but to
remember that they represent the art of dream condensation by an exclu-
sion of unnecessary detail. Prominence is given to the common character
of the combination. Analysis must also generally supply the common
features. The dream says simply: All these things have an "x" in com-
mon. The decomposition of these mixed images by analysis is often the
quickest way to an interpretation of the dream. Thus I once dreamt that I
was sitting with one of my former university tutors on a bench, which
was undergoing a rapid continuous movement amidst other benches.
This was a combination of lecture-room and moving staircase. I will not
pursue the further result of the thought. Another time I was sitting in a
carriage, and on my lap an object in shape like a top-hat, which,
however, was made of transparent glass. The scene at once brought to
my mind the proverb: "He who keeps his hat in his hand will travel
safely through the land." By a slight turn the glass hat reminded me of
Auer's light, and I knew that I was about to invent something which was
to make me as rich and independent as his invention had made my
countryman, Dr. Auer, of Welsbach; then I should be able to travel in-
stead of remaining in Vienna. In the dream I was traveling with my in-
vention, with the, it is true, rather awkward glass top-hat. The dream
work is peculiarly adept at representing two contradictory conceptions
by means of the same mixed image. Thus, for instance, a woman dreamt
of herself carrying a tall flower-stalk, as in the picture of the
Annunciation (Chastity-Mary is her own name), but the stalk was be-
decked with thick white blossoms resembling camellias (contrast with
chastity: La dame aux Camelias). A great deal of what we have called
"dream condensation" can be thus formulated. Each one of the elements
of the dream content is overdetermined by the matter of the dream
thoughts; it is not derived from one element of these thoughts, but from
a whole series. These are not necessarily interconnected in any way, but
may belong to the most diverse spheres of thought. The dream element
truly represents all this disparate matter in the dream content. Analysis,
moreover, discloses another side of the relationship between dream con-
tent and dream thoughts. Just as one element of the dream leads to asso-
ciations with several dream thoughts, so, as a rule, the one dream
thought represents more than one dream element. The threads of the as-
sociation do not simply converge from the dream thoughts to the dream

22
content, but on the way they overlap and interweave in every way. Next
to the transformation of one thought in the scene (its "dramatization"),
condensation is the most important and most characteristic feature of the
dream work. We have as yet no clue as to the motive calling for such
compression of the content. In the complicated and intricate dreams with
which we are now concerned, condensation and dramatization do not
wholly account for the difference between dream contents and dream
thoughts. There is evidence of a third factor, which deserves careful con-
sideration. When I have arrived at an understanding of the dream
thoughts by my analysis I notice, above all, that the matter of the mani-
fest is very different from that of the latent dream content. That is, I ad-
mit, only an apparent difference which vanishes on closer investigation,
for in the end I find the whole dream content carried out in the dream
thoughts, nearly all the dream thoughts again represented in the dream
content. Nevertheless, there does remain a certain amount of difference.
The essential content which stood out clearly and broadly in the dream
must, after analysis, rest satisfied with a very subordinate rôle among the
dream thoughts. These very dream thoughts which, going by my feel-
ings, have a claim to the greatest importance are either not present at all
in the dream content, or are represented by some remote allusion in
some obscure region of the dream. I can thus describe these phenomena:
During the dream work the psychical intensity of those thoughts and
conceptions to which it properly pertains flows to others which, in my
judgment, have no claim to such emphasis. There is no other process
which contributes so much to concealment of the dream's meaning and
to make the connection between the dream content and dream ideas irre-
cognizable. During this process, which I will call the dream displace-
ment, I notice also the psychical intensity, significance, or emotional
nature of the thoughts become transposed in sensory vividness. What
was clearest in the dream seems to me, without further consideration,
the most important; but often in some obscure element of the dream I
can recognize the most direct offspring of the principal dream thought. I
could only designate this dream displacement as the transvaluation of
psychical values. The phenomena will not have been considered in all its
bearings unless I add that this displacement or transvaluation is shared
by different dreams in extremely varying degrees. There are dreams
which take place almost without any displacement. These have the same
time, meaning, and intelligibility as we found in the dreams which recor-
ded a desire. In other dreams not a bit of the dream idea has retained its
own psychical value, or everything essential in these dream ideas has

23
been replaced by unessentials, whilst every kind of transition between
these conditions can be found. The more obscure and intricate a dream
is, the greater is the part to be ascribed to the impetus of displacement in
its formation. The example that we chose for analysis shows, at least, this
much of displacement—that its content has a different center of interest
from that of the dream ideas. In the forefront of the dream content the
main scene appears as if a woman wished to make advances to me; in
the dream idea the chief interest rests on the desire to enjoy disinterested
love which shall "cost nothing"; this idea lies at the back of the talk about
the beautiful eyes and the far-fetched allusion to "spinach." If we abolish
the dream displacement, we attain through analysis quite certain conclu-
sions regarding two problems of the dream which are most disputed—as
to what provokes a dream at all, and as to the connection of the dream
with our waking life. There are dreams which at once expose their links
with the events of the day; in others no trace of such a connection can be
found. By the aid of analysis it can be shown that every dream, without
any exception, is linked up with our impression of the day, or perhaps it
would be more correct to say of the day previous to the dream. The im-
pressions which have incited the dream may be so important that we are
not surprised at our being occupied with them whilst awake; in this case
we are right in saying that the dream carries on the chief interest of our
waking life. More usually, however, when the dream contains anything
relating to the impressions of the day, it is so trivial, unimportant, and so
deserving of oblivion, that we can only recall it with an effort. The dream
content appears, then, even when coherent and intelligible, to be con-
cerned with those indifferent trifles of thought undeserving of our wak-
ing interest. The depreciation of dreams is largely due to the predomin-
ance of the indifferent and the worthless in their content. Analysis des-
troys the appearance upon which this derogatory judgment is based.
When the dream content discloses nothing but some indifferent impres-
sion as instigating the dream, analysis ever indicates some significant
event, which has been replaced by something indifferent with which it
has entered into abundant associations. Where the dream is concerned
with uninteresting and unimportant conceptions, analysis reveals the
numerous associative paths which connect the trivial with the moment-
ous in the psychical estimation of the individual. It is only the action of
displacement if what is indifferent obtains recognition in the dream con-
tent instead of those impressions which are really the stimulus, or in-
stead of the things of real interest. In answering the question as to what
provokes the dream, as to the connection of the dream, in the daily

24
troubles, we must say, in terms of the insight given us by replacing the
manifest latent dream content: The dream does never trouble itself about
things which are not deserving of our concern during the day, and trivi-
alities which do not trouble us during the day have no power to pursue
us whilst asleep. What provoked the dream in the example which we
have analyzed? The really unimportant event, that a friend invited me to
a free ride in his cab. The table d'hôte scene in the dream contains an al-
lusion to this indifferent motive, for in conversation I had brought the
taxi parallel with the table d'hôte. But I can indicate the important event
which has as its substitute the trivial one. A few days before I had dis-
bursed a large sum of money for a member of my family who is very
dear to me. Small wonder, says the dream thought, if this person is
grateful to me for this—this love is not cost-free. But love that shall cost
nothing is one of the prime thoughts of the dream. The fact that shortly
before this I had had several drives with the relative in question puts the
one drive with my friend in a position to recall the connection with the
other person. The indifferent impression which, by such ramifications,
provokes the dream is subservient to another condition which is not true
of the real source of the dream—the impression must be a recent one,
everything arising from the day of the dream. I cannot leave the question
of dream displacement without the consideration of a remarkable pro-
cess in the formation of dreams in which condensation and displacement
work together towards one end. In condensation we have already con-
sidered the case where two conceptions in the dream having something
in common, some point of contact, are replaced in the dream content by
a mixed image, where the distinct germ corresponds to what is common,
and the indistinct secondary modifications to what is distinctive. If dis-
placement is added to condensation, there is no formation of a mixed im-
age, but a common mean which bears the same relationship to the indi-
vidual elements as does the resultant in the parallelogram of forces to its
components. In one of my dreams, for instance, there is talk of an injec-
tion with propyl. On first analysis I discovered an indifferent but true in-
cident where amyl played a part as the excitant of the dream. I cannot
yet vindicate the exchange of amyl for propyl. To the round of ideas of
the same dream, however, there belongs the recollection of my first visit
to Munich, when the Propylœa struck me. The attendant circumstances
of the analysis render it admissible that the influence of this second
group of conceptions caused the displacement of amyl to propyl. Propyl
is, so to say, the mean idea between amyl and propylœa; it got into the
dream as a kind of compromise by simultaneous condensation and

25
displacement. The need of discovering some motive for this bewildering
work of the dream is even more called for in the case of displacement
than in condensation. Although the work of displacement must be held
mainly responsible if the dream thoughts are not refound or recognized
in the dream content (unless the motive of the changes be guessed), it is
another and milder kind of transformation which will be considered
with the dream thoughts which leads to the discovery of a new but read-
ily understood act of the dream work. The first dream thoughts which
are unravelled by analysis frequently strike one by their unusual word-
ing. They do not appear to be expressed in the sober form which our
thinking prefers; rather are they expressed symbolically by allegories
and metaphors like the figurative language of the poets. It is not difficult
to find the motives for this degree of constraint in the expression of
dream ideas. The dream content consists chiefly of visual scenes; hence
the dream ideas must, in the first place, be prepared to make use of these
forms of presentation. Conceive that a political leader's or a barrister's
address had to be transposed into pantomime, and it will be easy to un-
derstand the transformations to which the dream work is constrained by
regard for this dramatization of the dream content. Around the psychical
stuff of dream thoughts there are ever found reminiscences of impres-
sions, not infrequently of early childhood—scenes which, as a rule, have
been visually grasped. Whenever possible, this portion of the dream
ideas exercises a definite influence upon the modelling of the dream con-
tent; it works like a center of crystallization, by attracting and rearran-
ging the stuff of the dream thoughts. The scene of the dream is not infre-
quently nothing but a modified repetition, complicated by interpolations
of events that have left such an impression; the dream but very seldom
reproduces accurate and unmixed reproductions of real scenes. The
dream content does not, however, consist exclusively of scenes, but it
also includes scattered fragments of visual images, conversations, and
even bits of unchanged thoughts. It will be perhaps to the point if we in-
stance in the briefest way the means of dramatization which are at the
disposal of the dream work for the repetition of the dream thoughts in
the peculiar language of the dream. The dream thoughts which we learn
from the analysis exhibit themselves as a psychical complex of the most
complicated superstructure. Their parts stand in the most diverse rela-
tionship to each other; they form backgrounds and foregrounds, stipula-
tions, digressions, illustrations, demonstrations, and protestations. It
may be said to be almost the rule that one train of thought is followed by
its contradictory. No feature known to our reason whilst awake is absent.

26
If a dream is to grow out of all this, the psychical matter is submitted to a
pressure which condenses it extremely, to an inner shrinking and dis-
placement, creating at the same time fresh surfaces, to a selective inter-
weaving among the constituents best adapted for the construction of
these scenes. Having regard to the origin of this stuff, the term regression
can be fairly applied to this process. The logical chains which hitherto
held the psychical stuff together become lost in this transformation to the
dream content. The dream work takes on, as it were, only the essential
content of the dream thoughts for elaboration. It is left to analysis to re-
store the connection which the dream work has destroyed. The dream's
means of expression must therefore be regarded as meager in comparis-
on with those of our imagination, though the dream does not renounce
all claims to the restitution of logical relation to the dream thoughts. It
rather succeeds with tolerable frequency in replacing these by formal
characters of its own. By reason of the undoubted connection existing
between all the parts of dream thoughts, the dream is able to embody
this matter into a single scene. It upholds a logical connection as approx-
imation in time and space, just as the painter, who groups all the poets
for his picture of Parnassus who, though they have never been all togeth-
er on a mountain peak, yet form ideally a community. The dream contin-
ues this method of presentation in individual dreams, and often when it
displays two elements close together in the dream content it warrants
some special inner connection between what they represent in the dream
thoughts. It should be, moreover, observed that all the dreams of one
night prove on analysis to originate from the same sphere of thought.
The causal connection between two ideas is either left without presenta-
tion, or replaced by two different long portions of dreams one after the
other. This presentation is frequently a reversed one, the beginning of
the dream being the deduction, and its end the hypothesis. The direct
transformation of one thing into another in the dream seems to serve the
relationship of cause and effect. The dream never utters the alternative
"either-or," but accepts both as having equal rights in the same connec-
tion. When "either-or" is used in the reproduction of dreams, it is, as I
have already mentioned, to be replaced by "and." Conceptions which
stand in opposition to one another are preferably expressed in dreams by
the same element.2 There seems no "not" in dreams. Opposition between
two ideas, the relation of conversion, is represented in dreams in a very
remarkable way. It is expressed by the reversal of another part of the
dream content just as if by way of appendix. We shall later on deal with
another form of expressing disagreement. The common dream sensation

27
of movement checked serves the purpose of representing disagreement
of impulses—a conflict of the will. Only one of the logical relation-
ships—that of similarity, identity, agreement—is found highly de-
veloped in the mechanism of dream formation. Dream work makes use
of these cases as a starting-point for condensation, drawing together
everything which shows such agreement to a fresh unity. These short,
crude observations naturally do not suffice as an estimate of the abund-
ance of the dream's formal means of presenting the logical relationships
of the dream thoughts. In this respect, individual dreams are worked up
more nicely or more carelessly, our text will have been followed more or
less closely, auxiliaries of the dream work will have been taken more or
less into consideration. In the latter case they appear obscure, intricate,
incoherent. When the dream appears openly absurd, when it contains an
obvious paradox in its content, it is so of purpose. Through its apparent
disregard of all logical claims, it expresses a part of the intellectual con-
tent of the dream ideas. Absurdity in the dream denotes disagreement,
scorn, disdain in the dream thoughts. As this explanation is in entire dis-
agreement with the view that the dream owes its origin to dissociated,
uncritical cerebral activity, I will emphasize my view by an example:
"One of my acquaintances, Mr. M____, has been attacked by no less a
person than Goethe in an essay with, we all maintain, unwarrantable vi-
olence. Mr. M____ has naturally been ruined by this attack. He com-
plains very bitterly of this at a dinner-party, but his respect for Goethe
has not diminished through this personal experience. I now attempt to
clear up the chronological relations which strike me as improbable. Go-
ethe died in 1832. As his attack upon Mr. M____ must, of course, have
taken place before, Mr. M____ must have been then a very young man. It
seems to me plausible that he was eighteen. I am not certain, however,
what year we are actually in, and the whole calculation falls into

[Link] is worthy of remark that eminent philologists maintain that the oldest languages
used the same word for expressing quite general antitheses. In C. Abel's essay,
"Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworter" (1884, the following examples of such words in
England are given: "gleam—gloom"; "to lock—loch"; "down—The Downs"; "to
step—to stop." In his essay on "The Origin of Language" ("Linguistic Essays," p. 240),
Abel says: "When the Englishman says 'without,' is not his judgment based upon the
comparative juxtaposition of two opposites, 'with' and 'out'; 'with' itself originally
meant 'without,' as may still be seen in 'withdraw.' 'Bid' includes the opposite sense
of giving and of proffering." Abel, "The English Verbs of Command," "Linguistic Es-
says," p. 104; see also Freud, "Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworte"; Jahrbuch für Psy-
choanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen, Band II., part i., p.
179).—TRANSLATOR.

28
obscurity. The attack was, moreover, contained in Goethe's well-known
essay on 'Nature.'" The absurdity of the dream becomes the more glaring
when I state that Mr. M____ is a young business man without any poetic-
al or literary interests. My analysis of the dream will show what method
there is in this madness. The dream has derived its material from three
sources: 1. Mr. M____, to whom I was introduced at a dinner-party,
begged me one day to examine his elder brother, who showed signs of
mental trouble. In conversation with the patient, an unpleasant episode
occurred. Without the slightest occasion he disclosed one of his brother's
youthful escapades. I had asked the patient the year of his birth (year of
death in dream), and led him to various calculations which might show
up his want of memory. 2. A medical journal which displayed my name
among others on the cover had published a ruinous review of a book by
my friend F____ of Berlin, from the pen of a very juvenile reviewer. I
communicated with the editor, who, indeed, expressed his regret, but
would not promise any redress. Thereupon I broke off my connection
with the paper; in my letter of resignation I expressed the hope that our
personal relations would not suffer from this. Here is the real source of
the dream. The derogatory reception of my friend's work had made a
deep impression upon me. In my judgment, it contained a fundamental
biological discovery which only now, several years later, commences to
find favor among the professors. 3. A little while before, a patient gave
me the medical history of her brother, who, exclaiming "Nature, Nature!"
had gone out of his mind. The doctors considered that the exclamation
arose from a study of Goethe's beautiful essay, and indicated that the pa-
tient had been overworking. I expressed the opinion that it seemed more
plausible to me that the exclamation "Nature!" was to be taken in that
sexual meaning known also to the less educated in our country. It
seemed to me that this view had something in it, because the unfortunate
youth afterwards mutilated his genital organs. The patient was eighteen
years old when the attack occurred. The first person in the dream-
thoughts behind the ego was my friend who had been so scandalously
treated. "I now attempted to clear up the chronological relation." My
friend's book deals with the chronological relations of life, and, amongst
other things, correlates Goethe's duration of life with a number of days
in many ways important to biology. The ego is, however, represented as
a general paralytic ("I am not certain what year we are actually in"). The
dream exhibits my friend as behaving like a general paralytic, and thus
riots in absurdity. But the dream thoughts run ironically. "Of course he is
a madman, a fool, and you are the genius who understands all about it.

29
But shouldn't it be the other way round?" This inversion obviously took
place in the dream when Goethe attacked the young man, which is ab-
surd, whilst any one, however young, can to-day easily attack the great
Goethe. I am prepared to maintain that no dream is inspired by other
than egoistic emotions. The ego in the dream does not, indeed, represent
only my friend, but stands for myself also. I identify myself with him be-
cause the fate of his discovery appears to me typical of the acceptance of
my own. If I were to publish my own theory, which gives sexuality pre-
dominance in the ætiology of psychoneurotic disorders (see the allusion
to the eighteen-year-old patient—"Nature, Nature!"), the same criticism
would be leveled at me, and it would even now meet with the same con-
tempt. When I follow out the dream thoughts closely, I ever find only
scorn and contempt as correlated with the dream's absurdity. It is well
known that the discovery of a cracked sheep's skull on the Lido in Venice
gave Goethe the hint for the so-called vertebral theory of the skull. My
friend plumes himself on having as a student raised a hubbub for the
resignation of an aged professor who had done good work (including
some in this very subject of comparative anatomy), but who, on account
of decrepitude, had become quite incapable of teaching. The agitation
my friend inspired was so successful because in the German Universities
an age limit is not demanded for academic work. Age is no protection
against folly. In the hospital here I had for years the honor to serve under
a chief who, long fossilized, was for decades notoriously feebleminded,
and was yet permitted to continue in his responsible office. A trait, after
the manner of the find in the Lido, forces itself upon me here. It was to
this man that some youthful colleagues in the hospital adapted the then
popular slang of that day: "No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller
composed that," etc. We have not exhausted our valuation of the dream
work. In addition to condensation, displacement, and definite arrange-
ment of the psychical matter, we must ascribe to it yet another activ-
ity—one which is, indeed, not shared by every dream. I shall not treat
this position of the dream work exhaustively; I will only point out that
the readiest way to arrive at a conception of it is to take for granted,
probably unfairly, that it only subsequently influences the dream content
which has already been built up. Its mode of action thus consists in so
coördinating the parts of the dream that these coalesce to a coherent
whole, to a dream composition. The dream gets a kind of façade which,
it is true, does not conceal the whole of its content. There is a sort of pre-
liminary explanation to be strengthened by interpolations and slight al-
terations. Such elaboration of the dream content must not be too

30
pronounced; the misconception of the dream thoughts to which it gives
rise is merely superficial, and our first piece of work in analyzing a
dream is to get rid of these early attempts at interpretation. The motives
for this part of the dream work are easily gauged. This final elaboration
of the dream is due to a regard for intelligibility—a fact at once betraying
the origin of an action which behaves towards the actual dream content
just as our normal psychical action behaves towards some proffered per-
ception that is to our liking. The dream content is thus secured under the
pretense of certain expectations, is perceptually classified by the supposi-
tion of its intelligibility, thereby risking its falsification, whilst, in fact, the
most extraordinary misconceptions arise if the dream can be correlated
with nothing familiar. Every one is aware that we are unable to look at
any series of unfamiliar signs, or to listen to a discussion of unknown
words, without at once making perpetual changes through our regard
for intelligibility, through our falling back upon what is familiar. We can
call those dreams properly made up which are the result of an elabora-
tion in every way analogous to the psychical action of our waking life. In
other dreams there is no such action; not even an attempt is made to
bring about order and meaning. We regard the dream as "quite mad," be-
cause on awaking it is with this last-named part of the dream work, the
dream elaboration, that we identify ourselves. So far, however, as our
analysis is concerned, the dream, which resembles a medley of discon-
nected fragments, is of as much value as the one with a smooth and
beautifully polished surface. In the former case we are spared, to some
extent, the trouble of breaking down the super-elaboration of the dream
content. All the same, it would be an error to see in the dream façade
nothing but the misunderstood and somewhat arbitrary elaboration of
the dream carried out at the instance of our psychical life. Wishes and
phantasies are not infrequently employed in the erection of this façade,
which were already fashioned in the dream thoughts; they are akin to
those of our waking life—"day-dreams," as they are very properly called.
These wishes and phantasies, which analysis discloses in our dreams at
night, often present themselves as repetitions and refashionings of the
scenes of infancy. Thus the dream façade may show us directly the true
core of the dream, distorted through admixture with other matter. Bey-
ond these four activities there is nothing else to be discovered in the
dream work. If we keep closely to the definition that dream work de-
notes the transference of dream thoughts to dream content, we are com-
pelled to say that the dream work is not creative; it develops no fancies
of its own, it judges nothing, decides nothing. It does nothing but

31
prepare the matter for condensation and displacement, and refashions it
for dramatization, to which must be added the inconstant last-named
mechanism—that of explanatory elaboration. It is true that a good deal is
found in the dream content which might be understood as the result of
another and more intellectual performance; but analysis shows conclus-
ively every time that these intellectual operations were already present
in the dream thoughts, and have only been taken over by the dream con-
tent. A syllogism in the dream is nothing other than the repetition of a
syllogism in the dream thoughts; it seems inoffensive if it has been trans-
ferred to the dream without alteration; it becomes absurd if in the dream
work it has been transferred to other matter. A calculation in the dream
content simply means that there was a calculation in the dream thoughts;
whilst this is always correct, the calculation in the dream can furnish the
silliest results by the condensation of its factors and the displacement of
the same operations to other things. Even speeches which are found in
the dream content are not new compositions; they prove to be pieced to-
gether out of speeches which have been made or heard or read; the
words are faithfully copied, but the occasion of their utterance is quite
overlooked, and their meaning is most violently changed. It is, perhaps,
not superfluous to support these assertions by examples: 1. A seemingly
inoffensive, well-made dream of a patient. She was going to market with
her cook, who carried the basket. The butcher said to her when she asked
him for something: "That is all gone," and wished to give her something
else, remarking; "That's very good." She declines, and goes to the green-
grocer, who wants to sell her a peculiar vegetable which is bound up in
bundles and of a black color. She says: "I don't know that; I won't take it."
The remark "That is all gone" arose from the treatment. A few days be-
fore I said myself to the patient that the earliest reminiscences of child-
hood are all gone as such, but are replaced by transferences and dreams.
Thus I am the butcher. The second remark, "I don't know that" arose in a
very different connection. The day before she had herself called out in re-
buke to the cook (who, moreover, also appears in the dream): "Behave
yourself properly; I don't know that"—that is, "I don't know this kind of
behavior; I won't have it." The more harmless portion of this speech was
arrived at by a displacement of the dream content; in the dream thoughts
only the other portion of the speech played a part, because the dream
work changed an imaginary situation into utter irrecognizability and
complete inoffensiveness (while in a certain sense I behave in an un-
seemly way to the lady). The situation resulting in this phantasy is,
however, nothing but a new edition of one that actually took place. 2. A

32
dream apparently meaningless relates to figures. "She wants to pay
something; her daughter takes three florins sixty-five kreuzers out of her
purse; but she says: 'What are you doing? It only cost twenty-one
kreuzers.'" The dreamer was a stranger who had placed her child at
school in Vienna, and who was able to continue under my treatment so
long as her daughter remained at Vienna. The day before the dream the
directress of the school had recommended her to keep the child another
year at school. In this case she would have been able to prolong her treat-
ment by one year. The figures in the dream become important if it be re-
membered that time is money. One year equals 365 days, or, expressed
in kreuzers, 365 kreuzers, which is three florins sixty-five kreuzers. The
twenty-one kreuzers correspond with the three weeks which remained
from the day of the dream to the end of the school term, and thus to the
end of the treatment. It was obviously financial considerations which
had moved the lady to refuse the proposal of the directress, and which
were answerable for the triviality of the amount in the dream. 3. A lady,
young, but already ten years married, heard that a friend of hers, Miss
Elise L____, of about the same age, had become engaged. This gave rise
to the following dream: She was sitting with her husband in the theater;
the one side of the stalls was quite empty. Her husband tells her, Elise
L____ and her fiancé had intended coming, but could only get some
cheap seats, three for one florin fifty kreuzers, and these they would not
take. In her opinion, that would not have mattered very much. The ori-
gin of the figures from the matter of the dream thoughts and the changes
the figures underwent are of interest. Whence came the one florin fifty
kreuzers? From a trifling occurrence of the previous day. Her sister-in-
law had received 150 florins as a present from her husband, and had
quickly got rid of it by buying some ornament. Note that 150 florins is
one hundred times one florin fifty kreuzers. For the three concerned with
the tickets, the only link is that Elise L____ is exactly three months
younger than the dreamer. The scene in the dream is the repetition of a
little adventure for which she has often been teased by her husband. She
was once in a great hurry to get tickets in time for a piece, and when she
came to the theater one side of the stalls was almost empty. It was there-
fore quite unnecessary for her to have been in such a hurry. Nor must we
overlook the absurdity of the dream that two persons should take three
tickets for the theater. Now for the dream ideas. It was stupid to have
married so early; I need not have been in so great a hurry. Elise L____'s
example shows me that I should have been able to get a husband later;

33
indeed, one a hundred times better if I had but waited. I could have
bought three such men with the money (dowry).

34
Chapter 3
Why the dream diguises the desire
In the foregoing exposition we have now learnt something of the dream
work; we must regard it as a quite special psychical process, which, so
far as we are aware, resembles nothing else. To the dream work has been
transferred that bewilderment which its product, the dream, has aroused
in us. In truth, the dream work is only the first recognition of a group of
psychical processes to which must be referred the origin of hysterical
symptoms, the ideas of morbid dread, obsession, and illusion. Condensa-
tion, and especially displacement, are never-failing features in these oth-
er processes. The regard for appearance remains, on the other hand, pe-
culiar to the dream work. If this explanation brings the dream into line
with the formation of psychical disease, it becomes the more important
to fathom the essential conditions of processes like dream building. It
will be probably a surprise to hear that neither the state of sleep nor ill-
ness is among the indispensable conditions. A whole number of phe-
nomena of the everyday life of healthy persons, forgetfulness, slips in
speaking and in holding things, together with a certain class of mistakes,
are due to a psychical mechanism analogous to that of the dream and the
other members of this group.
Displacement is the core of the problem, and the most striking of all
the dream performances. A thorough investigation of the subject shows
that the essential condition of displacement is purely psychological; it is
in the nature of a motive. We get on the track by thrashing out experi-
ences which one cannot avoid in the analysis of dreams. I had to break
off the relations of my dream thoughts in the analysis of my dream on p.
8 because I found some experiences which I do not wish strangers to
know, and which I could not relate without serious damage to important
considerations. I added, it would be no use were I to select another in-
stead of that particular dream; in every dream where the content is ob-
scure or intricate, I should hit upon dream thoughts which call for
secrecy. If, however, I continue the analysis for myself, without regard to

35
those others, for whom, indeed, so personal an event as my dream can-
not matter, I arrive finally at ideas which surprise me, which I have not
known to be mine, which not only appear foreign to me, but which are
unpleasant, and which I would like to oppose vehemently, whilst the
chain of ideas running through the analysis intrudes upon me inexor-
ably. I can only take these circumstances into account by admitting that
these thoughts are actually part of my psychical life, possessing a certain
psychical intensity or energy. However, by virtue of a particular psycho-
logical condition, the thoughts could not become conscious to me. I call
this particular condition "Repression." It is therefore impossible for me
not to recognize some casual relationship between the obscurity of the
dream content and this state of repression—this incapacity of conscious-
ness. Whence I conclude that the cause of the obscurity is the desire to
conceal these thoughts. Thus I arrive at the conception of the dream dis-
tortion as the deed of the dream work, and of displacement serving to
disguise this object.
I will test this in my own dream, and ask myself, What is the thought
which, quite innocuous in its distorted form, provokes my liveliest op-
position in its real form? I remember that the free drive reminded me of
the last expensive drive with a member of my family, the interpretation
of the dream being: I should for once like to experience affection for
which I should not have to pay, and that shortly before the dream I had
to make a heavy disbursement for this very person. In this connection, I
cannot get away from the thought that I regret this disbursement. It is
only when I acknowledge this feeling that there is any sense in my wish-
ing in the dream for an affection that should entail no outlay. And yet I
can state on my honor that I did not hesitate for a moment when it be-
came necessary to expend that sum. The regret, the counter-current, was
unconscious to me. Why it was unconscious is quite another question
which would lead us far away from the answer which, though within
my knowledge, belongs elsewhere.
If I subject the dream of another person instead of one of my own to
analysis, the result is the same; the motives for convincing others is,
however, changed. In the dream of a healthy person the only way for me
to enable him to accept this repressed idea is the coherence of the dream
thoughts. He is at liberty to reject this explanation. But if we are dealing
with a person suffering from any neurosis—say from hysteria—the re-
cognition of these repressed ideas is compulsory by reason of their con-
nection with the symptoms of his illness and of the improvement result-
ing from exchanging the symptoms for the repressed ideas. Take the

36
patient from whom I got the last dream about the three tickets for one
florin fifty kreuzers. Analysis shows that she does not think highly of her
husband, that she regrets having married him, that she would be glad to
change him for some one else. It is true that she maintains that she loves
her husband, that her emotional life knows nothing about this depreci-
ation (a hundred times better!), but all her symptoms lead to the same
conclusion as this dream. When her repressed memories had rewakened
a certain period when she was conscious that she did not love her hus-
band, her symptoms disappeared, and therewith disappeared her resist-
ance to the interpretation of the dream.
This conception of repression once fixed, together with the distortion
of the dream in relation to repressed psychical matter, we are in a posi-
tion to give a general exposition of the principal results which the ana-
lysis of dreams supplies. We learnt that the most intelligible and mean-
ingful dreams are unrealized desires; the desires they pictured as real-
ized are known to consciousness, have been held over from the daytime,
and are of absorbing interest. The analysis of obscure and intricate
dreams discloses something very similar; the dream scene again pictures
as realized some desire which regularly proceeds from the dream ideas,
but the picture is unrecognizable, and is only cleared up in the analysis.
The desire itself is either one repressed, foreign to consciousness, or it is
closely bound up with repressed ideas. The formula for these dreams
may be thus stated: They are concealed realizations of repressed desires.
It is interesting to note that they are right who regard the dream as fore-
telling the future. Although the future which the dream shows us is not
that which will occur, but that which we would like to occur. Folk psy-
chology proceeds here according to its wont; it believes what it wishes to
believe.
Dreams can be divided into three classes according to their relation to-
wards the realization of desire. Firstly come those which exhibit a non-
repressed, non-concealed desire; these are dreams of the infantile type,
becoming ever rarer among adults. Secondly, dreams which express in
veiled form some repressed desire; these constitute by far the larger
number of our dreams, and they require analysis for their understand-
ing. Thirdly, these dreams where repression exists, but without or with
but slight concealment. These dreams are invariably accompanied by a
feeling of dread which brings the dream to an end. This feeling of dread
here replaces dream displacement; I regarded the dream work as having
prevented this in the dream of the second class. It is not very difficult to

37
prove that what is now present as intense dread in the dream was once
desire, and is now secondary to the repression.
There are also definite dreams with a painful content, without the
presence of any anxiety in the dream. These cannot be reckoned among
dreams of dread; they have, however, always been used to prove the un-
importance and the psychical futility of dreams. An analysis of such an
example will show that it belongs to our second class of dreams—a per-
fectly concealed realization of repressed desires. Analysis will demon-
strate at the same time how excellently adapted is the work of displace-
ment to the concealment of desires.
A girl dreamt that she saw lying dead before her the only surviving
child of her sister amid the same surroundings as a few years before she
saw the first child lying dead. She was not sensible of any pain, but nat-
urally combatted the view that the scene represented a desire of hers.
Nor was that view necessary. Years ago it was at the funeral of the child
that she had last seen and spoken to the man she loved. Were the second
child to die, she would be sure to meet this man again in her sister's
house. She is longing to meet him, but struggles against this feeling. The
day of the dream she had taken a ticket for a lecture, which announced
the presence of the man she always loved. The dream is simply a dream
of impatience common to those which happen before a journey, theater,
or simply anticipated pleasures. The longing is concealed by the shifting
of the scene to the occasion when any joyous feeling were out of place,
and yet where it did once exist. Note, further, that the emotional behavi-
or in the dream is adapted, not to the displaced, but to the real but sup-
pressed dream ideas. The scene anticipates the long-hoped-for meeting;
there is here no call for painful emotions.
There has hitherto been no occasion for philosophers to bestir them-
selves with a psychology of repression. We must be allowed to construct
some clear conception as to the origin of dreams as the first steps in this
unknown territory. The scheme which we have formulated not only
from a study of dreams is, it is true, already somewhat complicated, but
we cannot find any simpler one that will suffice. We hold that our psych-
ical apparatus contains two procedures for the construction of thoughts.
The second one has the advantage that its products find an open path to
consciousness, whilst the activity of the first procedure is unknown to it-
self, and can only arrive at consciousness through the second one. At the
borderland of these two procedures, where the first passes over into the
second, a censorship is established which only passes what pleases it,
keeping back everything else. That which is rejected by the censorship is,

38
according to our definition, in a state of repression. Under certain condi-
tions, one of which is the sleeping state, the balance of power between
the two procedures is so changed that what is repressed can no longer be
kept back. In the sleeping state this may possibly occur through the neg-
ligence of the censor; what has been hitherto repressed will now succeed
in finding its way to consciousness. But as the censorship is never absent,
but merely off guard, certain alterations must be conceded so as to pla-
cate it. It is a compromise which becomes conscious in this case—a com-
promise between what one procedure has in view and the demands of
the other. Repression, laxity of the censor, compromise—this is the
foundation for the origin of many another psychological process, just as
it is for the dream. In such compromises we can observe the processes of
condensation, of displacement, the acceptance of superficial associations,
which we have found in the dream work.
It is not for us to deny the demonic element which has played a part in
constructing our explanation of dream work. The impression left is that
the formation of obscure dreams proceeds as if a person had something
to say which must be agreeable for another person upon whom he is de-
pendent to hear. It is by the use of this image that we figure to ourselves
the conception of the dream distortion and of the censorship, and ven-
tured to crystallize our impression in a rather crude, but at least definite,
psychological theory. Whatever explanation the future may offer of these
first and second procedures, we shall expect a confirmation of our correl-
ate that the second procedure commands the entrance to consciousness,
and can exclude the first from consciousness.
Once the sleeping state overcome, the censorship resumes complete
sway, and is now able to revoke that which was granted in a moment of
weakness. That the forgetting of dreams explains this in part, at least, we
are convinced by our experience, confirmed again and again. During the
relation of a dream, or during analysis of one, it not infrequently hap-
pens that some fragment of the dream is suddenly forgotten. This frag-
ment so forgotten invariably contains the best and readiest approach to
an understanding of the dream. Probably that is why it sinks into oblivi-
on—i.e., into a renewed suppression.
Viewing the dream content as the representation of a realized desire,
and referring its vagueness to the changes made by the censor in the
repressed matter, it is no longer difficult to grasp the function of dreams.
In fundamental contrast with those saws which assume that sleep is dis-
turbed by dreams, we hold the dream as the guardian of sleep. So far as
children's dreams are concerned, our view should find ready acceptance.

39
 The sleeping state or the psychical change to sleep, whatsoever it be, is
brought about by the child being sent to sleep or compelled thereto by
fatigue, only assisted by the removal of all stimuli which might open oth-
er objects to the psychical apparatus. The means which serve to keep ex-
ternal stimuli distant are known; but what are the means we can employ
to depress the internal psychical stimuli which frustrate sleep? Look at a
mother getting her child to sleep. The child is full of beseeching; he
wants another kiss; he wants to play yet awhile. His requirements are in
part met, in part drastically put off till the following day. Clearly these
desires and needs, which agitate him, are hindrances to sleep. Every one
knows the charming story of the bad boy (Baldwin Groller's) who awoke
at night bellowing out, "I want the rhinoceros." A really good boy, in-
stead of bellowing, would have dreamt that he was playing with the
rhinoceros. Because the dream which realizes his desire is believed dur-
ing sleep, it removes the desire and makes sleep possible. It cannot be
denied that this belief accords with the dream image, because it is ar-
rayed in the psychical appearance of probability; the child is without the
capacity which it will acquire later to distinguish hallucinations or
phantasies from reality.
The adult has learnt this differentiation; he has also learnt the futility
of desire, and by continuous practice manages to postpone his aspira-
tions, until they can be granted in some roundabout method by a change
in the external world. For this reason it is rare for him to have his wishes
realized during sleep in the short psychical way. It is even possible that
this never happens, and that everything which appears to us like a
child's dream demands a much more elaborate explanation. Thus it is
that for adults—for every sane person without exception—a differenti-
ation of the psychical matter has been fashioned which the child knew
not. A psychical procedure has been reached which, informed by the ex-
perience of life, exercises with jealous power a dominating and restrain-
ing influence upon psychical emotions; by its relation to consciousness,
and by its spontaneous mobility, it is endowed with the greatest means
of psychical power. A portion of the infantile emotions has been with-
held from this procedure as useless to life, and all the thoughts which
flow from these are found in the state of repression.
Whilst the procedure in which we recognize our normal ego reposes
upon the desire for sleep, it appears compelled by the psycho-physiolo-
gical conditions of sleep to abandon some of the energy with which it
was wont during the day to keep down what was repressed. This neglect
is really harmless; however much the emotions of the child's spirit may

40
be stirred, they find the approach to consciousness rendered difficult,
and that to movement blocked in consequence of the state of sleep. The
danger of their disturbing sleep must, however, be avoided. Moreover,
we must admit that even in deep sleep some amount of free attention is
exerted as a protection against sense-stimuli which might, perchance,
make an awakening seem wiser than the continuance of sleep. Otherwise
we could not explain the fact of our being always awakened by stimuli of
certain quality. As the old physiologist Burdach pointed out, the mother
is awakened by the whimpering of her child, the miller by the cessation
of his mill, most people by gently calling out their names. This attention,
thus on the alert, makes use of the internal stimuli arising from repressed
desires, and fuses them into the dream, which as a compromise satisfies
both procedures at the same time. The dream creates a form of psychical
release for the wish which is either suppressed or formed by the aid of
repression, inasmuch as it presents it as realized. The other procedure is
also satisfied, since the continuance of the sleep is assured. Our ego here
gladly behaves like a child; it makes the dream pictures believable, say-
ing, as it were, "Quite right, but let me sleep." The contempt which, once
awakened, we bear the dream, and which rests upon the absurdity and
apparent illogicality of the dream, is probably nothing but the reasoning
of our sleeping ego on the feelings about what was repressed; with great-
er right it should rest upon the incompetency of this disturber of our
sleep. In sleep we are now and then aware of this contempt; the dream
content transcends the censorship rather too much, we think, "It's only a
dream," and sleep on.
It is no objection to this view if there are borderlines for the dream
where its function, to preserve sleep from interruption, can no longer be
maintained—as in the dreams of impending dread. It is here changed for
another function—to suspend the sleep at the proper time. It acts like a
conscientious night-watchman, who first does his duty by quelling dis-
turbances so as not to waken the citizen, but equally does his duty quite
properly when he awakens the street should the causes of the trouble
seem to him serious and himself unable to cope with them alone.
This function of dreams becomes especially well marked when there
arises some incentive for the sense perception. That the senses aroused
during sleep influence the dream is well known, and can be experiment-
ally verified; it is one of the certain but much overestimated results of the
medical investigation of dreams. Hitherto there has been an insoluble
riddle connected with this discovery. The stimulus to the sense by which
the investigator affects the sleeper is not properly recognized in the

41
dream, but is intermingled with a number of indefinite interpretations,
whose determination appears left to psychical free-will. There is, of
course, no such psychical free-will. To an external sense-stimulus the
sleeper can react in many ways. Either he awakens or he succeeds in
sleeping on. In the latter case he can make use of the dream to dismiss
the external stimulus, and this, again, in more ways than one. For in-
stance, he can stay the stimulus by dreaming of a scene which is abso-
lutely intolerable to him. This was the means used by one who was
troubled by a painful perineal abscess. He dreamt that he was on horse-
back, and made use of the poultice, which was intended to alleviate his
pain, as a saddle, and thus got away from the cause of the trouble. Or, as
is more frequently the case, the external stimulus undergoes a new ren-
dering, which leads him to connect it with a repressed desire seeking its
realization, and robs him of its reality, and is treated as if it were a part
of the psychical matter. Thus, some one dreamt that he had written a
comedy which embodied a definite motif; it was being performed; the
first act was over amid enthusiastic applause; there was great clapping.
At this moment the dreamer must have succeeded in prolonging his
sleep despite the disturbance, for when he woke he no longer heard the
noise; he concluded rightly that some one must have been beating a car-
pet or bed. The dreams which come with a loud noise just before waking
have all attempted to cover the stimulus to waking by some other ex-
planation, and thus to prolong the sleep for a little while.
Whosoever has firmly accepted this censorship as the chief motive for
the distortion of dreams will not be surprised to learn as the result of
dream interpretation that most of the dreams of adults are traced by ana-
lysis to erotic desires. This assertion is not drawn from dreams obviously
of a sexual nature, which are known to all dreamers from their own ex-
perience, and are the only ones usually described as "sexual dreams."
These dreams are ever sufficiently mysterious by reason of the choice of
persons who are made the objects of sex, the removal of all the barriers
which cry halt to the dreamer's sexual needs in his waking state, the
many strange reminders as to details of what are called perversions. But
analysis discovers that, in many other dreams in whose manifest content
nothing erotic can be found, the work of interpretation shows them up
as, in reality, realization of sexual desires; whilst, on the other hand, that
much of the thought-making when awake, the thoughts saved us as sur-
plus from the day only, reaches presentation in dreams with the help of
repressed erotic desires.

42
 Towards the explanation of this statement, which is no theoretical pos-
tulate, it must be remembered that no other class of instincts has re-
quired so vast a suppression at the behest of civilization as the sexual,
whilst their mastery by the highest psychical processes are in most per-
sons soonest of all relinquished. Since we have learnt to understand in-
fantile sexuality, often so vague in its expression, so invariably over-
looked and misunderstood, we are justified in saying that nearly every
civilized person has retained at some point or other the infantile type of
sex life; thus we understand that repressed infantile sex desires furnish
the most frequent and most powerful impulses for the formation of
dreams.3 If the dream, which is the expression of some erotic desire, suc-
ceeds in making its manifest content appear innocently asexual, it is only
possible in one way. The matter of these sexual presentations cannot be
exhibited as such, but must be replaced by allusions, suggestions, and
similar indirect means; differing from other cases of indirect presenta-
tion, those used in dreams must be deprived of direct understanding.
The means of presentation which answer these requirements are com-
monly termed "symbols." A special interest has been directed towards
these, since it has been observed that the dreamers of the same language
use the like symbols—indeed, that in certain cases community of symbol
is greater than community of speech. Since the dreamers do not them-
selves know the meaning of the symbols they use, it remains a puzzle
whence arises their relationship with what they replace and denote. The
fact itself is undoubted, and becomes of importance for the technique of
the interpretation of dreams, since by the aid of a knowledge of this sym-
bolism it is possible to understand the meaning of the elements of a
dream, or parts of a dream, occasionally even the whole dream itself,
without having to question the dreamer as to his own ideas. We thus
come near to the popular idea of an interpretation of dreams, and, on the
other hand, possess again the technique of the ancients, among whom
the interpretation of dreams was identical with their explanation
through symbolism. Though the study of dream symbolism is far re-
moved from finality, we now possess a series of general statements and
of particular observations which are quite certain. There are symbols
which practically always have the same meaning: Emperor and Empress
(King and Queen) always mean the parents; room, a woman4, and so on.
The sexes are represented by a great variety of symbols, many of which
would be at first quite incomprehensible had not the clews to the

[Link], "Three Contributions to Sexual Theory," translated by A.A. Brill (Journal of

Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company, New York).

43
meaning been often obtained through other channels. There are symbols
of universal circulation, found in all dreamers, of one range of speech
and culture; there are others of the narrowest individual significance
which an individual has built up out of his own material. In the first
class those can be differentiated whose claim can be at once recognized
by the replacement of sexual things in common speech (those, for in-
stance, arising from agriculture, as reproduction, seed) from others
whose sexual references appear to reach back to the earliest times and to
the obscurest depths of our image-building. The power of building sym-
bols in both these special forms of symbols has not died out. Recently
discovered things, like the airship, are at once brought into universal use
as sex symbols. It would be quite an error to suppose that a profounder
knowledge of dream symbolism (the "Language of Dreams") would
make us independent of questioning the dreamer regarding his impres-
sions about the dream, and would give us back the whole technique of
ancient dream interpreters. Apart from individual symbols and the vari-
ations in the use of what is general, one never knows whether an element
in the dream is to be understood symbolically or in its proper meaning;
the whole content of the dream is certainly not to be interpreted symbol-
ically. The knowledge of dream symbols will only help us in understand-
ing portions of the dream content, and does not render the use of the
technical rules previously given at all superfluous. But it must be of the
greatest service in interpreting a dream just when the impressions of the
dreamer are withheld or are insufficient. Dream symbolism proves also
indispensable for understanding the so-called "typical" dreams and the
dreams that "repeat themselves." Dream symbolism leads us far beyond
the dream; it does not belong only to dreams, but is likewise dominant in
legend, myth, and saga, in wit and in folklore. It compels us to pursue
the inner meaning of the dream in these productions. But we must ac-
knowledge that symbolism is not a result of the dream work, but is a pe-
culiarity probably of our unconscious thinking, which furnishes to the
dream work the matter for condensation, displacement, and
dramatization.

[Link] words from "and" to "channels" in the next sentence is a short summary of the
passage in the original. As this book will be read by other than professional people
the passage has not been translated, in deference to English opin-
ion.—TRANSLATOR.

44
Chapter 4
Dream analysis
Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation is cap-
able of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus
which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not,
however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon as
we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question has
arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analyzed as the ful-
fillment of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case dream-disfig-
urement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content serves only as a
disguise for what is wished. Keeping in mind our assumptions in regard
to the two psychic instances, we may now proceed to say: disagreeable
dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something which is disagreeable to
the second instance, but which at the same time fulfills a wish of the first
instance. They are wish dreams in the sense that every dream originates
in the first instance, while the second instance acts towards the dream
only in repelling, not in a creative manner. If we limit ourselves to a con-
sideration of what the second instance contributes to the dream, we can
never understand the dream. If we do so, all the riddles which the au-
thors have found in the dream remain unsolved.
That the dream actually has a secret meaning, which turns out to be
the fulfillment of a wish, must be proved afresh for every case by means
of an analysis. I therefore select several dreams which have painful con-
tents and attempt an analysis of them. They are partly dreams of hyster-
ical subjects, which require long preliminary statements, and now and
then also an examination of the psychic processes which occur in hys-
teria. I cannot, however, avoid this added difficulty in the exposition.
When I give a psychoneurotic patient analytical treatment, dreams are
always, as I have said, the subject of our discussion. It must, therefore,
give him all the psychological explanations through whose aid I myself
have come to an understanding of his symptoms, and here I undergo an
unsparing criticism, which is perhaps not less keen than that I must

45
expect from my colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all dreams
are the fulfillments of wishes is raised by my patients with perfect regu-
larity. Here are several examples of the dream material which is offered
me to refute this position.
"You always tell me that the dream is a wish fulfilled," begins a clever
lady patient. "Now I shall tell you a dream in which the content is quite
the opposite, in which a wish of mine is not fulfilled. How do you recon-
cile that with your theory? The dream is as follows:—
"I want to give a supper, but having nothing at hand except some
smoked salmon, I think of going marketing, but I remember that it is
Sunday afternoon, when all the shops are closed. I next try to telephone
to some caterers, but the telephone is out of order… . Thus I must resign
my wish to give a supper."
I answer, of course, that only the analysis can decide the meaning of
this dream, although I admit that at first sight it seems sensible and co-
herent, and looks like the opposite of a wish-fulfillment. "But what oc-
currence has given rise to this dream?" I ask. "You know that the stimu-
lus for a dream always lies among the experiences of the preceding day."
Analysis.—The husband of the patient, an upright and conscientious
wholesale butcher, had told her the day before that he is growing too fat,
and that he must, therefore, begin treatment for obesity. He was going to
get up early, take exercise, keep to a strict diet, and above all accept no
more invitations to suppers. She proceeds laughingly to relate how her
husband at an inn table had made the acquaintance of an artist, who in-
sisted upon painting his portrait because he, the painter, had never
found such an expressive head. But her husband had answered in his
rough way, that he was very thankful for the honor, but that he was
quite convinced that a portion of the backside of a pretty young girl
would please the artist better than his whole face5. She said that she was
at the time very much in love with her husband, and teased him a good
deal. She had also asked him not to send her any caviare. What does that
mean? As a matter of fact, she had wanted for a long time to eat a caviare
sandwich every forenoon, but had grudged herself the expense. Of
course, she would at once get the caviare from her husband, as soon as
she asked him for it. But she had begged him, on the contrary, not to
send her the caviare, in order that she might tease him about it longer.
This explanation seems far-fetched to me. Unadmitted motives are in the

[Link] sit for the painter. Goethe: "And if he has no backside, how can the nobleman
sit?"

46
habit of hiding behind such unsatisfactory explanations. We are re-
minded of subjects hypnotized by Bernheim, who carried out a posthyp-
notic order, and who, upon being asked for their motives, instead of an-
swering: "I do not know why I did that," had to invent a reason that was
obviously inadequate. Something similar is probably the case with the
caviare of my patient. I see that she is compelled to create an unfulfilled
wish in life. Her dream also shows the reproduction of the wish as ac-
complished. But why does she need an unfulfilled wish? The ideas so far
produced are insufficient for the interpretation of the dream. I beg for
more. After a short pause, which corresponds to the overcoming of a res-
istance, she reports further that the day before she had made a visit to a
friend, of whom she is really jealous, because her husband is always
praising this woman so much. Fortunately, this friend is very lean and
thin, and her husband likes well-rounded figures. Now of what did this
lean friend speak? Naturally of her wish to become somewhat stouter.
She also asked my patient: "When are you going to invite us again? You
always have such a good table." Now the meaning of the dream is clear. I
may say to the patient: "It is just as though you had thought at the time
of the request: 'Of course, I'll invite you, so you can eat yourself fat at my
house and become still more pleasing to my husband. I would rather
give no more suppers.' The dream then tells you that you cannot give a
supper, thereby fulfilling your wish not to contribute anything to the
rounding out of your friend's figure. The resolution of your husband to
refuse invitations to supper for the sake of getting thin teaches you that
one grows fat on the things served in company." Now only some conver-
sation is necessary to confirm the solution. The smoked salmon in the
dream has not yet been traced. "How did the salmon mentioned in the
dream occur to you?" "Smoked salmon is the favorite dish of this friend,"
she answered. I happen to know the lady, and may corroborate this by
saying that she grudges herself the salmon just as much as my patient
grudges herself the caviare. The dream admits of still another and more
exact interpretation, which is necessitated only by a subordinate circum-
stance. The two interpretations do not contradict one another, but rather
cover each other and furnish a neat example of the usual ambiguity of
dreams as well as of all other psychopathological formations. We have
seen that at the same time that she dreams of the denial of the wish, the
patient is in reality occupied in securing an unfulfilled wish (the caviare
sandwiches). Her friend, too, had expressed a wish, namely, to get fatter,
and it would not surprise us if our lady had dreamt that the wish of the
friend was not being fulfilled. For it is her own wish that a wish of her

47
friend's—for increase in weight—should not be fulfilled. Instead of this,
however, she dreams that one of her own wishes is not fulfilled. The
dream becomes capable of a new interpretation, if in the dream she does
not intend herself, but her friend, if she has put herself in the place of her
friend, or, as we may say, has identified herself with her friend. I think
she has actually done this, and as a sign of this identification she has cre-
ated an unfulfilled wish in reality. But what is the meaning of this hys-
terical identification? To clear this up a thorough exposition is necessary.
Identification is a highly important factor in the mechanism of hysterical
symptoms; by this means patients are enabled in their symptoms to rep-
resent not merely their own experiences, but the experiences of a great
number of other persons, and can suffer, as it were, for a whole mass of
people, and fill all the parts of a drama by means of their own personalit-
ies alone. It will here be objected that this is well-known hysterical imita-
tion, the ability of hysteric subjects to copy all the symptoms which im-
press them when they occur in others, as though their pity were stimu-
lated to the point of reproduction. But this only indicates the way in
which the psychic process is discharged in hysterical imitation; the way
in which a psychic act proceeds and the act itself are two different things.
The latter is slightly more complicated than one is apt to imagine the im-
itation of hysterical subjects to be: it corresponds to an unconscious con-
cluded process, as an example will show. The physician who has a fe-
male patient with a particular kind of twitching, lodged in the company
of other patients in the same room of the hospital, is not surprised when
some morning he learns that this peculiar hysterical attack has found im-
itations. He simply says to himself: The others have seen her and have
done likewise: that is psychic infection. Yes, but psychic infection pro-
ceeds in somewhat the following manner: As a rule, patients know more
about one another than the physician knows about each of them, and
they are concerned about each other when the visit of the doctor is over.
Some of them have an attack to-day: soon it is known among the rest
that a letter from home, a return of lovesickness or the like, is the cause
of it. Their sympathy is aroused, and the following syllogism, which
does not reach consciousness, is completed in them: "If it is possible to
have this kind of an attack from such causes, I too may have this kind of
an attack, for I have the same reasons." If this were a cycle capable of be-
coming conscious, it would perhaps express itself in fear of getting the
same attack; but it takes place in another psychic sphere, and, therefore,
ends in the realization of the dreaded symptom. Identification is there-
fore not a simple imitation, but a sympathy based upon the same

48
etiological claim; it expresses an "as though," and refers to some common
quality which has remained in the unconscious. Identification is most of-
ten used in hysteria to express sexual community. An hysterical woman
identifies herself most readily—although not exclusively—with persons
with whom she has had sexual relations, or who have sexual intercourse
with the same persons as herself. Language takes such a conception into
consideration: two lovers are "one." In the hysterical phantasy, as well as
in the dream, it is sufficient for the identification if one thinks of sexual
relations, whether or not they become real. The patient, then, only fol-
lows the rules of the hysterical thought processes when she gives expres-
sion to her jealousy of her friend (which, moreover, she herself admits to
be unjustified, in that she puts herself in her place and identifies herself
with her by creating a symptom—the denied wish). I might further clari-
fy the process specifically as follows: She puts herself in the place of her
friend in the dream, because her friend has taken her own place relation
to her husband, and because she would like to take her friend's place in
the esteem of her husband 6. The contradiction to my theory of dreams in
the case of another female patient, the most witty among all my dream-
ers, was solved in a simpler manner, although according to the scheme
that the non-fulfillment of one wish signifies the fulfillment of another. I
had one day explained to her that the dream is a wish of fulfillment. The
next day she brought me a dream to the effect that she was traveling
with her mother-in-law to their common summer resort. Now I knew
that she had struggled violently against spending the summer in the
neighborhood of her mother-in-law. I also knew that she had luckily
avoided her mother-in-law by renting an estate in a far-distant country
resort. Now the dream reversed this wished-for solution; was not this in
the flattest contradiction to my theory of wish-fulfillment in the dream?
Certainly, it was only necessary to draw the inferences from this dream
in order to get at its interpretation. According to this dream, I was in the
wrong. It was thus her wish that I should be in the wrong, and this wish
the dream showed her as fulfilled. But the wish that I should be in the
wrong, which was fulfilled in the theme of the country home, referred to
a more serious matter. At that time I had made up my mind, from the

6.I myself regret the introduction of such passages from the psychopathology of
hysteria, which, because of their fragmentary representation and of being torn from
all connection with the subject, cannot have a very enlightening influence. If these
passages are capable of throwing light upon the intimate relations between the
dream and the psychoneuroses, they have served the purpose for which I have taken
them up.

49
material furnished by her analysis, that something of significance for her
illness must have occurred at a certain time in her life. She had denied it
because it was not present in her memory. We soon came to see that I
was in the right. Her wish that I should be in the wrong, which is trans-
formed into the dream, thus corresponded to the justifiable wish that
those things, which at the time had only been suspected, had never oc-
curred at all. Without an analysis, and merely by means of an assump-
tion, I took the liberty of interpreting a little occurrence in the case of a
friend, who had been my colleague through the eight classes of the Gym-
nasium. He once heard a lecture of mine delivered to a small assemblage,
on the novel subject of the dream as the fulfillment of a wish. He went
home, dreamt that he had lost all his suits—he was a lawyer—and then
complained to me about it. I took refuge in the evasion: "One can't win
all one's suits," but I thought to myself: "If for eight years I sat as Primus
on the first bench, while he moved around somewhere in the middle of
the class, may he not naturally have had a wish from his boyhood days
that I, too, might for once completely disgrace myself?" In the same way
another dream of a more gloomy character was offered me by a female
patient as a contradiction to my theory of the wish-dream. The patient, a
young girl, began as follows: "You remember that my sister has now
only one boy, Charles: she lost the elder one, Otto, while I was still at her
house. Otto was my favorite; it was I who really brought him up. I like
the other little fellow, too, but of course not nearly as much as the dead
one. Now I dreamt last night that I saw Charles lying dead before me. He
was lying in his little coffin, his hands folded: there were candles all
about, and, in short, it was just like the time of little Otto's death, which
shocked me so profoundly. Now tell me, what does this mean? You
know me: am I really bad enough to wish my sister to lose the only child
she has left? Or does the dream mean that I wish Charles to be dead
rather than Otto, whom I like so much better?" I assured her that this in-
terpretation was impossible. After some reflection I was able to give her
the interpretation of the dream, which I subsequently made her confirm.
Having become an orphan at an early age, the girl had been brought up
in the house of a much older sister, and had met among the friends and
visitors who came to the house, a man who made a lasting impression
upon her heart. It looked for a time as though these barely expressed re-
lations were to end in marriage, but this happy culmination was frus-
trated by the sister, whose motives have never found a complete explan-
ation. After the break, the man who was loved by our patient avoided
the house: she herself became independent some time after little Otto's

50
death, to whom her affection had now turned. But she did not succeed in
freeing herself from the inclination for her sister's friend in which she
had become involved. Her pride commanded her to avoid him; but it
was impossible for her to transfer her love to the other suitors who
presented themselves in order. Whenever the man whom she loved, who
was a member of the literary profession, announced a lecture anywhere,
she was sure to be found in the audience; she also seized every other op-
portunity to see him from a distance unobserved by him. I remembered
that on the day before she had told me that the Professor was going to a
certain concert, and that she was also going there, in order to enjoy the
sight of him. This was on the day of the dream; and the concert was to
take place on the day on which she told me the dream. I could now eas-
ily see the correct interpretation, and I asked her whether she could think
of any event which had happened after the death of little Otto. She
answered immediately: "Certainly; at that time the Professor returned
after a long absence, and I saw him once more beside the coffin of little
Otto." It was exactly as I had expected. I interpreted the dream in the fol-
lowing manner: "If now the other boy were to die, the same thing would
be repeated. You would spend the day with your sister, the Professor
would surely come in order to offer condolence, and you would see him
again under the same circumstances as at that time. The dream signifies
nothing but this wish of yours to see him again, against which you are
fighting inwardly. I know that you are carrying the ticket for to-day's
concert in your bag. Your dream is a dream of impatience; it has anticip-
ated the meeting which is to take place to-day by several hours." In order
to disguise her wish she had obviously selected a situation in which
wishes of that sort are commonly suppressed—a situation which is so
filled with sorrow that love is not thought of. And yet, it is very easily
probable that even in the actual situation at the bier of the second, more
dearly loved boy, which the dream copied faithfully, she had not been
able to suppress her feelings of affection for the visitor whom she had
missed for so long a time. A different explanation was found in the case
of a similar dream of another female patient, who was distinguished in
her earlier years by her quick wit and her cheerful demeanors and who
still showed these qualities at least in the notion, which occurred to her
in the course of treatment. In connection with a longer dream, it seemed
to this lady that she saw her fifteen-year-old daughter lying dead before
her in a box. She was strongly inclined to convert this dream-image into
an objection to the theory of wish-fulfillment, but herself suspected that
the detail of the box must lead to a different conception of the dream.7 In

51
the course of the analysis it occurred to her that on the evening before,
the conversation of the company had turned upon the English word
"box," and upon the numerous translations of it into German, such as
box, theater box, chest, box on the ear, &c. From other components of the
same dream it is now possible to add that the lady had guessed the rela-
tionship between the English word "box" and the German Büchse, and
had then been haunted by the memory that Büchse (as well as "box") is
used in vulgar speech to designate the female genital organ. It was there-
fore possible, making a certain allowance for her notions on the subject
of topographical anatomy, to assume that the child in the box signified a
child in the womb of the mother. At this stage of the explanation she no
longer denied that the picture of the dream really corresponded to one of
her wishes. Like so many other young women, she was by no means
happy when she became pregnant, and admitted to me more than once
the wish that her child might die before its birth; in a fit of anger follow-
ing a violent scene with her husband she had even struck her abdomen
with her fists in order to hit the child within. The dead child was, there-
fore, really the fulfillment of a wish, but a wish which had been put aside
for fifteen years, and it is not surprising that the fulfillment of the wish
was no longer recognized after so long an interval. For there had been
many changes meanwhile. The group of dreams to which the two last
mentioned belong, having as content the death of beloved relatives, will
be considered again under the head of "Typical Dreams." I shall there be
able to show by new examples that in spite of their undesirable content,
all these dreams must be interpreted as wish-fulfillments. For the follow-
ing dream, which again was told me in order to deter me from a hasty
generalization of the theory of wishing in dreams, I am indebted, not to a
patient, but to an intelligent jurist of my acquaintance. "I dream," my in-
formant tells me, "that I am walking in front of my house with a lady on
my arm. Here a closed wagon is waiting, a gentleman steps up to me,
gives his authority as an agent of the police, and demands that I should
follow him. I only ask for time in which to arrange my affairs. Can you
possibly suppose this is a wish of mine to be arrested?" "Of course not," I
must admit. "Do you happen to know upon what charge you were arres-
ted?" "Yes; I believe for infanticide." "Infanticide? But you know that only
a mother can commit this crime upon her newly born child?" "That is
true."8 "And under what circumstances did you dream; what happened
on the evening before?" "I would rather not tell you that; it is a delicate
matter." "But I must have it, otherwise we must forgo the interpretation
[Link] like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred supper.

52
of the dream." "Well, then, I will tell you. I spent the night, not at home,
but at the house of a lady who means very much to me. When we awoke
in the morning, something again passed between us. Then I went to
sleep again, and dreamt what I have told you." "The woman is married?"
"Yes." "And you do not wish her to conceive a child?" "No; that might be-
tray us." "Then you do not practice normal coitus?" "I take the precaution
to withdraw before ejaculation." "Am I permitted to assume that you did
this trick several times during the night, and that in the morning you
were not quite sure whether you had succeeded?" "That might be the
case." "Then your dream is the fulfillment of a wish. By means of it you
secure the assurance that you have not begotten a child, or, what
amounts to the same thing, that you have killed a child. I can easily
demonstrate the connecting links. Do you remember, a few days ago we
were talking about the distress of matrimony (Ehenot), and about the in-
consistency of permitting the practice of coitus as long as no impregna-
tion takes place, while every delinquency after the ovum and the semen
meet and a fœtus is formed is punished as a crime? In connection with
this, we also recalled the mediæval controversy about the moment of
time at which the soul is really lodged in the fœtus, since the concept of
murder becomes admissible only from that point on. Doubtless you also
know the gruesome poem by Lenau, which puts infanticide and the pre-
vention of children on the same plane." "Strangely enough, I had
happened to think of Lenau during the afternoon." "Another echo of
your dream. And now I shall demonstrate to you another subordinate
wish-fulfillment in your dream. You walk in front of your house with the
lady on your arm. So you take her home, instead of spending the night at
her house, as you do in actuality. The fact that the wish-fulfillment,
which is the essence of the dream, disguises itself in such an unpleasant
form, has perhaps more than one reason. From my essay on the etiology
of anxiety neuroses, you will see that I note interrupted coitus as one of
the factors which cause the development of neurotic fear. It would be
consistent with this that if after repeated cohabitation of the kind men-
tioned you should be left in an uncomfortable mood, which now be-
comes an element in the composition of your dream. You also make use
of this unpleasant state of mind to conceal the wish-fulfillment. Further-
more, the mention of infanticide has not yet been explained. Why does

[Link] often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a recollection of the
omitted portions appear only in the course of the analysis. These portions sub-
sequently fitted in, regularly furnish the key to the interpretation. Cf. below, about
forgetting in dreams.

53
this crime, which is peculiar to females, occur to you?" "I shall confess to
you that I was involved in such an affair years ago. Through my fault a
girl tried to protect herself from the consequences of a liaison with me by
securing an abortion. I had nothing to do with carrying out the plan, but
I was naturally for a long time worried lest the affair might be dis-
covered." "I understand; this recollection furnished a second reason why
the supposition that you had done your trick badly must have been pain-
ful to you." A young physician, who had heard this dream of my col-
league when it was told, must have felt implicated by it, for he hastened
to imitate it in a dream of his own, applying its mode of thinking to an-
other subject. The day before he had handed in a declaration of his in-
come, which was perfectly honest, because he had little to declare. He
dreamt that an acquaintance of his came from a meeting of the tax com-
mission and informed him that all the other declarations of income had
passed uncontested, but that his own had awakened general suspicion,
and that he would be punished with a heavy fine. The dream is a poorly-
concealed fulfillment of the wish to be known as a physician with a large
income. It likewise recalls the story of the young girl who was advised
against accepting her suitor because he was a man of quick temper who
would surely treat her to blows after they were married. The answer of
the girl was: "I wish he would strike me!" Her wish to be married is so
strong that she takes into the bargain the discomfort which is said to be
connected with matrimony, and which is predicted for her, and even
raises it to a wish. If I group the very frequently occurring dreams of this
sort, which seem flatly to contradict my theory, in that they contain the
denial of a wish or some occurrence decidedly unwished for, under the
head of "counter wish-dreams," I observe that they may all be referred to
two principles, of which one has not yet been mentioned, although it
plays a large part in the dreams of human beings. One of the motives in-
spiring these dreams is the wish that I should appear in the wrong.
These dreams regularly occur in the course of my treatment if the patient
shows a resistance against me, and I can count with a large degree of cer-
tainty upon causing such a dream after I have once explained to the pa-
tient my theory that the dream is a wish-fulfillment.9 I may even expect
this to be the case in a dream merely in order to fulfill the wish that I
may appear in the wrong. The last dream which I shall tell from those
occurring in the course of treatment again shows this very thing. A

[Link] "counter wish-dreams" have been repeatedly reported to me within the

last few years by my pupils who thus reacted to their first encounter with the "wish
theory of the dream."

54
young girl who has struggled hard to continue my treatment, against the
will of her relatives and the authorities whom she had consulted, dreams
as follows: She is forbidden at home to come to me any more. She then
reminds me of the promise I made her to treat her for nothing if neces-
sary, and I say to her: "I can show no consideration in money matters." It
is not at all easy in this case to demonstrate the fulfillment of a wish, but
in all cases of this kind there is a second problem, the solution of which
helps also to solve the first. Where does she get the words which she
puts into my mouth? Of course I have never told her anything like that,
but one of her brothers, the very one who has the greatest influence over
her, has been kind enough to make this remark about me. It is then the
purpose of the dream that this brother should remain in the right; and
she does not try to justify this brother merely in the dream; it is her pur-
pose in life and the motive for her being ill. The other motive for counter
wish-dreams is so clear that there is danger of overlooking it, as for some
time happened in my own case. In the sexual make-up of many people
there is a masochistic component, which has arisen through the conver-
sion of the aggressive, sadistic component into its opposite. Such people
are called "ideal" masochists, if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain
which may be inflicted upon them, but in humiliation and in chastise-
ment of the soul. It is obvious that such persons can have counter wish-
dreams and disagreeable dreams, which, however, for them are nothing
but wish-fulfillment, affording satisfaction for their masochistic inclina-
tions. Here is such a dream. A young man, who has in earlier years tor-
mented his elder brother, towards whom he was homosexually inclined,
but who had undergone a complete change of character, has the follow-
ing dream, which consists of three parts: (1) He is "insulted" by his broth-
er. (2) Two adults are caressing each other with homosexual intentions.
(3) His brother has sold the enterprise whose management the young
man reserved for his own future. He awakens from the last-mentioned
dream with the most unpleasant feelings, and yet it is a masochistic
wish-dream, which might be translated: It would serve me quite right if
my brother were to make that sale against my interest, as a punishment
for all the torments which he has suffered at my hands. I hope that the
above discussion and examples will suffice—until further objection can
be raised—to make it seem credible that even dreams with a painful con-
tent are to be analyzed as the fulfillments of wishes. Nor will it seem a
matter of chance that in the course of interpretation one always happens
upon subjects of which one does not like to speak or think. The disagree-
able sensation which such dreams arouse is simply identical with the

55
antipathy which endeavors—usually with success—to restrain us from
the treatment or discussion of such subjects, and which must be over-
come by all of us, if, in spite of its unpleasantness, we find it necessary to
take the matter in hand. But this disagreeable sensation, which occurs
also in dreams, does not preclude the existence of a wish; every one has
wishes which he would not like to tell to others, which he does not want
to admit even to himself. We are, on other grounds, justified in connect-
ing the disagreeable character of all these dreams with the fact of dream
disfigurement, and in concluding that these dreams are distorted, and
that the wish-fulfillment in them is disguised until recognition is im-
possible for no other reason than that a repugnance, a will to suppress,
exists in relation to the subject-matter of the dream or in relation to the
wish which the dream creates. Dream disfigurement, then, turns out in
reality to be an act of the censor. We shall take into consideration
everything which the analysis of disagreeable dreams has brought to
light if we reword our formula as follows: The dream is the (disguised)
fulfillment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish. Now there still remain as a
particular species of dreams with painful content, dreams of anxiety, the
inclusion of which under dreams of wishing will find least acceptance
with the uninitiated. But I can settle the problem of anxiety dreams in
very short order; for what they may reveal is not a new aspect of the
dream problem; it is a question in their case of understanding neurotic
anxiety in general. The fear which we experience in the dream is only
seemingly explained by the dream content. If we subject the content of
the dream to analysis, we become aware that the dream fear is no more
justified by the dream content than the fear in a phobia is justified by the
idea upon which the phobia depends. For example, it is true that it is
possible to fall out of a window, and that some care must be exercised
when one is near a window, but it is inexplicable why the anxiety in the
corresponding phobia is so great, and why it follows its victims to an ex-
tent so much greater than is warranted by its origin. The same explana-
tion, then, which applies to the phobia applies also to the dream of anxi-
ety. In both cases the anxiety is only superficially attached to the idea
which accompanies it and comes from another source. On account of the
intimate relation of dream fear to neurotic fear, discussion of the former
obliges me to refer to the latter. In a little essay on "The Anxiety Neuros-
is,"10 I maintained that neurotic fear has its origin in the sexual life, and
corresponds to a libido which has been turned away from its object and

[Link] Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, p. 133, translated by

A.A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Monograph Series.

56
has not succeeded in being applied. From this formula, which has since
proved its validity more and more clearly, we may deduce the conclu-
sion that the content of anxiety dreams is of a sexual nature, the libido
belonging to which content has been transformed into fear.

57
Chapter 5
Sex in dreams
The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams, the more willing
one must become to acknowledge that the majority of the dreams of
adults treat of sexual material and give expression to erotic wishes. Only
one who really analyzes dreams, that is to say, who pushes forward from
their manifest content to the latent dream thoughts, can form an opinion
on this subject—never the person who is satisfied with registering the
manifest content (as, for example, Näcke in his works on sexual dreams).
Let us recognize at once that this fact is not to be wondered at, but that it
is in complete harmony with the fundamental assumptions of dream ex-
planation. No other impulse has had to undergo so much suppression
from the time of childhood as the sex impulse in its numerous compon-
ents, from no other impulse have survived so many and such intense un-
conscious wishes, which now act in the sleeping state in such a manner
as to produce dreams. In dream interpretation, this significance of sexual
complexes must never be forgotten, nor must they, of course, be exagger-
ated to the point of being considered exclusive.
Of many dreams it can be ascertained by a careful interpretation that
they are even to be taken bisexually, inasmuch as they result in an irre-
futable secondary interpretation in which they realize homosexual feel-
ings—that is, feelings that are common to the normal sexual activity of
the dreaming person. But that all dreams are to be interpreted bisexually,
seems to me to be a generalization as indemonstrable as it is improbable,
which I should not like to support. Above all I should not know how to
dispose of the apparent fact that there are many dreams satisfying other
than—in the widest sense—erotic needs, as dreams of hunger, thirst,
convenience, &c. Likewise the similar assertions "that behind every
dream one finds the death sentence" (Stekel), and that every dream
shows "a continuation from the feminine to the masculine line" (Adler),
seem to me to proceed far beyond what is admissible in the interpreta-
tion of dreams.

58
 We have already asserted elsewhere that dreams which are conspicu-
ously innocent invariably embody coarse erotic wishes, and we might
confirm this by means of numerous fresh examples. But many dreams
which appear indifferent, and which would never be suspected of any
particular significance, can be traced back, after analysis, to unmistak-
ably sexual wish-feelings, which are often of an unexpected nature. For
example, who would suspect a sexual wish in the following dream until
the interpretation had been worked out? The dreamer relates: Between
two stately palaces stands a little house, receding somewhat, whose
doors are closed. My wife leads me a little way along the street up to the
little house, and pushes in the door, and then I slip quickly and easily in-
to the interior of a courtyard that slants obliquely upwards.
Any one who has had experience in the translating of dreams will, of
course, immediately perceive that penetrating into narrow spaces, and
opening locked doors, belong to the commonest sexual symbolism, and
will easily find in this dream a representation of attempted coition from
behind (between the two stately buttocks of the female body). The nar-
row slanting passage is of course the vagina; the assistance attributed to
the wife of the dreamer requires the interpretation that in reality it is
only consideration for the wife which is responsible for the detention
from such an attempt. Moreover, inquiry shows that on the previous day
a young girl had entered the household of the dreamer who had pleased
him, and who had given him the impression that she would not be alto-
gether opposed to an approach of this sort. The little house between the
two palaces is taken from a reminiscence of the Hradschin in Prague,
and thus points again to the girl who is a native of that city.
If with my patients I emphasize the frequency of the Oedipus
dream—of having sexual intercourse with one's mother—I get the an-
swer: "I cannot remember such a dream." Immediately afterwards,
however, there arises the recollection of another disguised and indiffer-
ent dream, which has been dreamed repeatedly by the patient, and the
analysis shows it to be a dream of this same content—that is, another
Oedipus dream. I can assure the reader that veiled dreams of sexual in-
tercourse with the mother are a great deal more frequent than open ones
to the same effect.
There are dreams about landscapes and localities in which emphasis is
always laid upon the assurance: "I have been there before." In this case
the locality is always the genital organ of the mother; it can indeed be as-
serted with such certainty of no other locality that one "has been there
before."

59
 A large number of dreams, often full of fear, which are concerned with
passing through narrow spaces or with staying, in the water, are based
upon fancies about the embryonic life, about the sojourn in the mother's
womb, and about the act of birth. The following is the dream of a young
man who in his fancy has already while in embryo taken advantage of
his opportunity to spy upon an act of coition between his parents.
"He is in a deep shaft, in which there is a window, as in the Semmering
Tunnel. At first he sees an empty landscape through this window, and
then he composes a picture into it, which is immediately at hand and
which fills out the empty space. The picture represents a field which is
being thoroughly harrowed by an implement, and the delightful air, the
accompanying idea of hard work, and the bluish-black clods of earth
make a pleasant impression. He then goes on and sees a primary school
opened … and he is surprised that so much attention is devoted in it to
the sexual feelings of the child, which makes him think of me."
Here is a pretty water-dream of a female patient, which was turned to
extraordinary account in the course of treatment.
At her summer resort at the … Lake, she hurls herself into the dark
water at a place where the pale moon is reflected in the water.
Dreams of this sort are parturition dreams; their interpretation is ac-
complished by reversing the fact reported in the manifest dream content;
thus, instead of "throwing one's self into the water," read "coming out of
the water," that is, "being born." The place from which one is born is re-
cognized if one thinks of the bad sense of the French "la lune." The pale
moon thus becomes the white "bottom" (Popo), which the child soon re-
cognizes as the place from which it came. Now what can be the meaning
of the patient's wishing to be born at her summer resort? I asked the
dreamer this, and she answered without hesitation: "Hasn't the treatment
made me as though I were born again?" Thus the dream becomes an in-
vitation to continue the cure at this summer resort, that is, to visit her
there; perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion to the wish to be-
come a mother herself.11 Another dream of parturition, with its interpret-
ation, I take from the work of E. Jones. "She stood at the seashore

[Link] is only of late that I have learned to value the significance of fancies and uncon-
scious thoughts about life in the womb. They contain the explanation of the curious
fear felt by so many people of being buried alive, as well as the profoundest uncon-
scious reason for the belief in a life after death which represents nothing but a projec-
tion into the future of this mysterious life before birth. The act of birth, moreover, is
the first experience with fear, and is thus the source and model of the emotion of fear.

60
watching a small boy, who seemed to be hers, wading into the water.
This he did till the water covered him, and she could only see his head
bobbing up and down near the surface. The scene then changed to the
crowded hall of a hotel. Her husband left her, and she 'entered into con-
versation with' a stranger." The second half of the dream was discovered
in the analysis to represent a flight from her husband, and the entering
into intimate relations with a third person, behind whom was plainly in-
dicated Mr. X.'s brother mentioned in a former dream. The first part of
the dream was a fairly evident birth phantasy. In dreams as in mytho-
logy, the delivery of a child from the uterine waters is commonly presen-
ted by distortion as the entry of the child into water; among many others,
the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are well-known illustra-
tions of this. The bobbing up and down of the head in the water at once
recalled to the patient the sensation of quickening she had experienced in
her only pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the water induced a
reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of the water, carrying
him into the nursery, washing him and dressing him, and installing him
in her household. The second half of the dream, therefore, represents
thoughts concerning the elopement, which belonged to the first half of
the underlying latent content; the first half of the dream corresponded
with the second half of the latent content, the birth phantasy. Besides this
inversion in order, further inversions took place in each half of the
dream. In the first half the child entered the water, and then his head
bobbed; in the underlying dream thoughts first the quickening occurred,
and then the child left the water (a double inversion). In the second half
her husband left her; in the dream thoughts she left her husband. Anoth-
er parturition dream is related by Abraham of a young woman looking
forward to her first confinement. From a place in the floor of the house a
subterranean canal leads directly into the water (parturition path, amni-
otic liquor). She lifts up a trap in the floor, and there immediately ap-
pears a creature dressed in a brownish fur, which almost resembles a
seal. This creature changes into the younger brother of the dreamer, to
whom she has always stood in maternal relationship. Dreams of "saving"
are connected with parturition dreams. To save, especially to save from
the water, is equivalent to giving birth when dreamed by a woman; this
sense is, however, modified when the dreamer is a man. Robbers, burg-
lars at night, and ghosts, of which we are afraid before going to bed, and
which occasionally even disturb our sleep, originate in one and the same
childish reminiscence. They are the nightly visitors who have awakened
the child to set it on the chamber so that it may not wet the bed, or have

61
lifted the cover in order to see clearly how the child is holding its hands
while sleeping. I have been able to induce an exact recollection of the
nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of these anxiety dreams. The
robbers were always the father, the ghosts more probably corresponded
to feminine persons with white night-gowns. When one has become fa-
miliar with the abundant use of symbolism for the representation of
sexual material in dreams, one naturally raises the question whether
there are not many of these symbols which appear once and for all with
a firmly established significance like the signs in stenography; and one is
tempted to compile a new dream-book according to the cipher method.
In this connection it may be remarked that this symbolism does not be-
long peculiarly to the dream, but rather to unconscious thinking, particu-
larly that of the masses, and it is to be found in greater perfection in the
folklore, in the myths, legends, and manners of speech, in the proverbial
sayings, and in the current witticisms of a nation than in its dreams. The
dream takes advantage of this symbolism in order to give a disguised
representation to its latent thoughts. Among the symbols which are used
in this manner there are of course many which regularly, or almost regu-
larly, mean the same thing. Only it is necessary to keep in mind the curi-
ous plasticity of psychic material. Now and then a symbol in the dream
content may have to be interpreted not symbolically, but according to its
real meaning; at another time the dreamer, owing to a peculiar set of re-
collections, may create for himself the right to use anything whatever as
a sexual symbol, though it is not ordinarily used in that way. Nor are the
most frequently used sexual symbols unambiguous every time. After
these limitations and reservations I may call attention to the following:
Emperor and Empress (King and Queen) in most cases really represent
the parents of the dreamer; the dreamer himself or herself is the prince or
princess. All elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks, and umbrellas (on ac-
count of the stretching-up which might be compared to an erection! all
elongated and sharp weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes, are intended
to represent the male member. A frequent, not very intelligible, symbol
for the same is a nail-file (on account of the rubbing and scraping?). Little
cases, boxes, caskets, closets, and stoves correspond to the female part.
The symbolism of lock and key has been very gracefully employed by
Uhland in his song about the "Grafen Eberstein," to make a common
smutty joke. The dream of walking through a row of rooms is a brothel
or harem dream. Staircases, ladders, and flights of stairs, or climbing on
these, either upwards or downwards, are symbolic representations of the
sexual act. Smooth walls over which one is climbing, façades of houses

62
upon which one is letting oneself down, frequently under great anxiety,
correspond to the erect human body, and probably repeat in the dream
reminiscences of the upward climbing of little children on their parents
or foster parents. "Smooth" walls are men. Often in a dream of anxiety
one is holding on firmly to some projection from a house. Tables, set
tables, and boards are women, perhaps on account of the opposition
which does away with the bodily contours. Since "bed and board"
(mensa et thorus) constitute marriage, the former are often put for the
latter in the dream, and as far as practicable the sexual presentation com-
plex is transposed to the eating complex. Of articles of dress the woman's
hat may frequently be definitely interpreted as the male genital. In
dreams of men one often finds the cravat as a symbol for the penis; this
indeed is not only because cravats hang down long, and are characterist-
ic of the man, but also because one can select them at pleasure, a freedom
which is prohibited by nature in the original of the symbol. Persons who
make use of this symbol in the dream are very extravagant with cravats,
and possess regular collections of them. All complicated machines and
apparatus in dream are very probably genitals, in the description of
which dream symbolism shows itself to be as tireless as the activity of
wit. Likewise many landscapes in dreams, especially with bridges or
with wooded mountains, can be readily recognized as descriptions of the
genitals. Finally where one finds incomprehensible neologisms one may
think of combinations made up of components having a sexual signific-
ance. Children also in the dream often signify the genitals, as men and
women are in the habit of fondly referring to their genital organ as their
"little one." As a very recent symbol of the male genital may be men-
tioned the flying machine, utilization of which is justified by its relation
to flying as well as occasionally by its form. To play with a little child or
to beat a little one is often the dream's representation of onanism. A
number of other symbols, in part not sufficiently verified are given by
Stekel, who illustrates them with examples. Right and left, according to
him, are to be conceived in the dream in an ethical sense. "The right way
always signifies the road to righteousness, the left the one to crime. Thus
the left may signify homosexuality, incest, and perversion, while the
right signifies marriage, relations with a prostitute, &c. The meaning is
always determined by the individual moral view-point of the dreamer."
Relatives in the dream generally play the rôle of genitals. Not to be able
to catch up with a wagon is interpreted by Stekel as regret not to be able
to come up to a difference in age. Baggage with which one travels is the
burden of sin by which one is oppressed. Also numbers, which

63
frequently occur in the dream, are assigned by Stekel a fixed symbolical
meaning, but these interpretations seem neither sufficiently verified nor
of general validity, although the interpretation in individual cases can
generally be recognized as probable. In a recently published book by W.
Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, which I was unable to utilize, there is a
list of the most common sexual symbols, the object of which is to prove
that all sexual symbols can be bisexually used. He states: "Is there a sym-
bol which (if in any way permitted by the phantasy) may not be used
simultaneously in the masculine and the feminine sense!" To be sure the
clause in parentheses takes away much of the absoluteness of this asser-
tion, for this is not at all permitted by the phantasy. I do not, however,
think it superfluous to state that in my experience Stekel's general state-
ment has to give way to the recognition of a greater manifoldness.
Besides those symbols, which are just as frequent for the male as for the
female genitals, there are others which preponderately, or almost exclus-
ively, designate one of the sexes, and there are still others of which only
the male or only the female signification is known. To use long, firm ob-
jects and weapons as symbols of the female genitals, or hollow objects
(chests, pouches, &c.), as symbols of the male genitals, is indeed not al-
lowed by the fancy. It is true that the tendency of the dream and the un-
conscious fancy to utilize the sexual symbol bisexually betrays an archaic
trend, for in childhood a difference in the genitals is unknown, and the
same genitals are attributed to both sexes. These very incomplete sugges-
tions may suffice to stimulate others to make a more careful collection. I
shall now add a few examples of the application of such symbolisms in
dreams, which will serve to show how impossible it becomes to interpret
a dream without taking into account the symbolism of dreams, and how
imperatively it obtrudes itself in many cases. 1. The hat as a symbol of
the man (of the male genital): (a fragment from the dream of a young
woman who suffered from agoraphobia on account of a fear of tempta-
tion). "I am walking in the street in summer, I wear a straw hat of peculi-
ar shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards and the side pieces
of which hang downwards (the description became here obstructed), and
in such a fashion that one is lower than the other. I am cheerful and in a
confidential mood, and as I pass a troop of young officers I think to my-
self: None of you can have any designs upon me." As she could produce
no associations to the hat, I said to her: "The hat is really a male genital,
with its raised middle piece and the two downward hanging side
pieces." I intentionally refrained from interpreting those details concern-
ing the unequal downward hanging of the two side pieces, although just

64
such individualities in the determinations lead the way to the interpreta-
tion. I continued by saying that if she only had a man with such a virile
genital she would not have to fear the officers—that is, she would have
nothing to wish from them, for she is mainly kept from going without
protection and company by her fancies of temptation. This last explana-
tion of her fear I had already been able to give her repeatedly on the
basis of other material. It is quite remarkable how the dreamer behaved
after this interpretation. She withdrew her description of the hat, and
claimed not to have said that the two side pieces were hanging down-
wards. I was, however, too sure of what I had heard to allow myself to
be misled, and I persisted in it. She was quiet for a while, and then found
the courage to ask why it was that one of her husband's testicles was
lower than the other, and whether it was the same in all men. With this
the peculiar detail of the hat was explained, and the whole interpretation
was accepted by her. The hat symbol was familiar to me long before the
patient related this dream. From other but less transparent cases I believe
that the hat may also be taken as a female genital. 2. The little one as the
genital—to be run over as a symbol of sexual intercourse (another dream
of the same agoraphobic patient). "Her mother sends away her little
daughter so that she must go alone. She rides with her mother to the rail-
road and sees her little one walking directly upon the tracks, so that she
cannot avoid being run over. She hears the bones crackle. (From this she
experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks
out through the car window to see whether the parts cannot be seen be-
hind. She then reproaches her mother for allowing the little one to go out
alone." Analysis. It is not an easy matter to give here a complete inter-
pretation of the dream. It forms part of a cycle of dreams, and can be
fully understood only in connection with the others. For it is not easy to
get the necessary material sufficiently isolated to prove the symbolism.
The patient at first finds that the railroad journey is to be interpreted his-
torically as an allusion to a departure from a sanatorium for nervous dis-
eases, with the superintendent of which she naturally was in love. Her
mother took her away from this place, and the physician came to the rail-
road station and handed her a bouquet of flowers on leaving; she felt un-
comfortable because her mother witnessed this homage. Here the moth-
er, therefore, appears as a disturber of her love affairs, which is the rôle
actually played by this strict woman during her daughter's girlhood. The
next thought referred to the sentence: "She then looks to see whether the
parts can be seen behind." In the dream façade one would naturally be
compelled to think of the parts of the little daughter run over and

65
ground up. The thought, however, turns in quite a different direction.
She recalls that she once saw her father in the bath-room naked from be-
hind; she then begins to talk about the sex differentiation, and asserts
that in the man the genitals can be seen from behind, but in the woman
they cannot. In this connection she now herself offers the interpretation
that the little one is the genital, her little one (she has a four-year-old
daughter) her own genital. She reproaches her mother for wanting her to
live as though she had no genital, and recognizes this reproach in the in-
troductory sentence of the dream; the mother sends away her little one
so that she must go alone. In her phantasy going alone on the street sig-
nifies to have no man and no sexual relations (coire = to go together),
and this she does not like. According to all her statements she really
suffered as a girl on account of the jealousy of her mother, because she
showed a preference for her father. The "little one" has been noted as a
symbol for the male or the female genitals by Stekel, who can refer in this
connection to a very widespread usage of language. The deeper inter-
pretation of this dream depends upon another dream of the same night
in which the dreamer identifies herself with her brother. She was a
"tomboy," and was always being told that she should have been born a
boy. This identification with the brother shows with special clearness
that "the little one" signifies the genital. The mother threatened him (her)
with castration, which could only be understood as a punishment for
playing with the parts, and the identification, therefore, shows that she
herself had masturbated as a child, though this fact she now retained
only in memory concerning her brother. An early knowledge of the male
genital which she later lost she must have acquired at that time accord-
ing to the assertions of this second dream. Moreover the second dream
points to the infantile sexual theory that girls originate from boys
through castration. After I had told her of this childish belief, she at once
confirmed it with an anecdote in which the boy asks the girl: "Was it cut
off?" to which the girl replied, "No, it's always been so." The sending
away of the little one, of the genital, in the first dream therefore also
refers to the threatened castration. Finally she blames her mother for not
having been born a boy. That "being run over" symbolizes sexual inter-
course would not be evident from this dream if we were not sure of it
from many other sources. 3. Representation of the genital by structures,
stairways, and shafts. (Dream of a young man inhibited by a father com-
plex.) "He is taking a walk with his father in a place which is surely the
Prater, for the Rotunda may be seen in front of which there is a small
front structure to which is attached a captive balloon; the balloon,

66
however, seems quite collapsed. His father asks him what this is all for;
he is surprised at it, but he explains it to his father. They come into a
court in which lies a large sheet of tin. His father wants to pull off a big
piece of this, but first looks around to see if any one is watching. He tells
his father that all he needs to do is to speak to the watchman, and then
he can take without any further difficulty as much as he wants to. From
this court a stairway leads down into a shaft, the walls of which are
softly upholstered something like a leather pocketbook. At the end of
this shaft there is a longer platform, and then a new shaft begins… ."
Analysis. This dream belongs to a type of patient which is not favorable
from a therapeutic point of view. They follow in the analysis without of-
fering any resistances whatever up to a certain point, but from that point
on they remain almost inaccessible. This dream he almost analyzed him-
self. "The Rotunda," he said, "is my genital, the captive balloon in front is
my penis, about the weakness of which I have worried." We must,
however, interpret in greater detail; the Rotunda is the buttock which is
regularly associated by the child with the genital, the smaller front struc-
ture is the scrotum. In the dream his father asks him what this is all
for—that is, he asks him about the purpose and arrangement of the gen-
itals. It is quite evident that this state of affairs should be turned around,
and that he should be the questioner. As such a questioning on the side
of the father has never taken place in reality, we must conceive the
dream thought as a wish, or take it conditionally, as follows: "If I had
only asked my father for sexual enlightenment." The continuation of this
thought we shall soon find in another place. The court in which the tin
sheet is spread out is not to be conceived symbolically in the first in-
stance, but originates from his father's place of business. For discretion-
ary reasons I have inserted the tin for another material in which the fath-
er deals, without, however, changing anything in the verbal expression
of the dream. The dreamer had entered his father's business, and had
taken a terrible dislike to the questionable practices upon which profit
mainly depends. Hence the continuation of the above dream thought ("if
I had only asked him") would be: "He would have deceived me just as he
does his customers." For the pulling off, which serves to represent com-
mercial dishonesty, the dreamer himself gives a second explana-
tion—namely, onanism. This is not only entirely familiar to us, but
agrees very well with the fact that the secrecy of onanism is expressed by
its opposite ("Why one can do it quite openly"). It, moreover, agrees en-
tirely with our expectations that the onanistic activity is again put off on
the father, just as was the questioning in the first scene of the dream. The

67
shaft he at once interprets as the vagina by referring to the soft uphol-
stering of the walls. That the act of coition in the vagina is described as a
going down instead of in the usual way as a going up, I have also found
true in other instances12. The details that at the end of the first shaft there
is a longer platform and then a new shaft, he himself explains biograph-
ically. He had for some time consorted with women sexually, but had
then given it up because of inhibitions and now hopes to be able to take
it up again with the aid of the treatment. The dream, however, becomes
indistinct toward the end, and to the experienced interpreter it becomes
evident that in the second scene of the dream the influence of another
subject has begun to assert itself; in this his father's business and his dis-
honest practices signify the first vagina represented as a shaft so that one
might think of a reference to the mother. 4. The male genital symbolized
by persons and the female by a landscape. (Dream of a woman of the
lower class, whose husband is a policeman, reported by B. Dattner.) …
Then some one broke into the house and anxiously called for a police-
man. But he went with two tramps by mutual consent into a church,13 to
which led a great many stairs;14 behind the church there was a moun-
tain,15 on top of which a dense forest.16 The policeman was furnished
with a helmet, a gorget, and a cloak.17 The two vagrants, who went along
with the policeman quite peaceably, had tied to their loins sack-like ap-
rons.18 A road led from the church to the mountain. This road was over-
grown on each side with grass and brushwood, which became thicker
and thicker as it reached the height of the mountain, where it spread out
into quite a forest. 5. A stairway dream. (Reported and interpreted by
Otto Rank.) For the following transparent pollution dream, I am in-
debted to the same colleague who furnished us with the dental-irritation
dream. "I am running down the stairway in the stair-house after a little
girl, whom I wish to punish because she has done something to me. At
the bottom of the stairs some one held the child for me. (A grown-up wo-
man?) I grasp it, but do not know whether I have hit it, for I suddenly
find myself in the middle of the stairway where I practice coitus with the
child (in the air as it were). It is really no coitus, I only rub my genital on
[Link]. Zentralblatt für psychoanalyse, I.
[Link] chapel—vagina.
[Link] of coitus.
[Link] veneris.
[Link] pubis.
[Link] in cloaks and capucines are, according to the explanation of a man versed
in the subject, of a phallic nature.
[Link] two halves of the scrotum.

68
her external genital, and in doing this I see it very distinctly, as distinctly
as I see her head which is lying sideways. During the sexual act I see
hanging to the left and above me (also as if in the air) two small pictures,
landscapes, representing a house on a green. On the smaller one my sur-
name stood in the place where the painter's signature should be; it
seemed to be intended for my birthday present. A small sign hung in
front of the pictures to the effect that cheaper pictures could also be ob-
tained. I then see myself very indistinctly lying in bed, just as I had seen
myself at the foot of the stairs, and I am awakened by a feeling of damp-
ness which came from the pollution." Interpretation. The dreamer had
been in a book-store on the evening of the day of the dream, where,
while he was waiting, he examined some pictures which were exhibited,
which represented motives similar to the dream pictures. He stepped
nearer to a small picture which particularly took his fancy in order to see
the name of the artist, which, however, was quite unknown to him. Later
in the same evening, in company, he heard about a Bohemian servant-
girl who boasted that her illegitimate child "was made on the stairs." The
dreamer inquired about the details of this unusual occurrence, and
learned that the servant-girl went with her lover to the home of her par-
ents, where there was no opportunity for sexual relations, and that the
excited man performed the act on the stairs. In witty allusion to the mis-
chievous expression used about wine-adulterers, the dreamer remarked,
"The child really grew on the cellar steps." These experiences of the day,
which are quite prominent in the dream content, were readily repro-
duced by the dreamer. But he just as readily reproduced an old fragment
of infantile recollection which was also utilized by the dream. The stair-
house was the house in which he had spent the greatest part of his child-
hood, and in which he had first become acquainted with sexual prob-
lems. In this house he used, among other things, to slide down the banis-
ter astride which caused him to become sexually excited. In the dream he
also comes down the stairs very rapidly—so rapidly that, according to
his own distinct assertions, he hardly touched the individual stairs, but
rather "flew" or "slid down," as we used to say. Upon reference to this in-
fantile experience, the beginning of the dream seems to represent the
factor of sexual excitement. In the same house and in the adjacent resid-
ence the dreamer used to play pugnacious games with the neighboring
children, in which he satisfied himself just as he did in the dream. If one
recalls from Freud's investigation of sexual symbolism19 that in the
dream stairs or climbing stairs almost regularly symbolizes coitus, the
[Link] Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, vol. i., p. 2.

69
dream becomes clear. Its motive power as well as its effect, as is shown
by the pollution, is of a purely libidinous nature. Sexual excitement be-
came aroused during the sleeping state (in the dream this is represented
by the rapid running or sliding down the stairs) and the sadistic thread
in this is, on the basis of the pugnacious playing, indicated in the pursu-
ing and overcoming of the child. The libidinous excitement becomes en-
hanced and urges to sexual action (represented in the dream by the
grasping of the child and the conveyance of it to the middle of the stair-
way). Up to this point the dream would be one of pure, sexual symbol-
ism, and obscure for the unpracticed dream interpreter. But this symbol-
ic gratification, which would have insured undisturbed sleep, was not
sufficient for the powerful libidinous excitement. The excitement leads to
an orgasm, and thus the whole stairway symbolism is unmasked as a
substitute for coitus. Freud lays stress on the rhythmical character of
both actions as one of the reasons for the sexual utilization of the stair-
way symbolism, and this dream especially seems to corroborate this, for,
according to the express assertion of the dreamer, the rhythm of a sexual
act was the most pronounced feature in the whole dream. Still another
remark concerning the two pictures, which, aside from their real signific-
ance, also have the value of "Weibsbilder" (literally woman-pictures, but
idiomatically women). This is at once shown by the fact that the dream
deals with a big and a little picture, just as the dream content presents a
big (grown up) and a little girl. That cheap pictures could also be ob-
tained points to the prostitution complex, just as the dreamer's surname
on the little picture and the thought that it was intended for his birthday,
point to the parent complex (to be born on the stairway—to be conceived
in coitus). The indistinct final scene, in which the dreamer sees himself
on the staircase landing lying in bed and feeling wet, seems to go back
into childhood even beyond the infantile onanism, and manifestly has its
prototype in similarly pleasurable scenes of bed-wetting. 6. A modified
stair-dream. To one of my very nervous patients, who was an abstainer,
whose fancy was fixed on his mother, and who repeatedly dreamed of
climbing stairs accompanied by his mother, I once remarked that moder-
ate masturbation would be less harmful to him than enforced abstinence.
This influence provoked the following dream: "His piano teacher re-
proaches him for neglecting his piano-playing, and for not practicing the
Etudes of Moscheles and Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum." In relation
to this he remarked that the Gradus is only a stairway, and that the piano
itself is only a stairway as it has a scale. It is correct to say that there is no
series of associations which cannot be adapted to the representation of

70
sexual facts. I conclude with the dream of a chemist, a young man, who
has been trying to give up his habit of masturbation by replacing it with
intercourse with women. Preliminary statement.—On the day before the
dream he had given a student instruction concerning Grignard's reac-
tion, in which magnesium is to be dissolved in absolutely pure ether un-
der the catalytic influence of iodine. Two days before, there had been an
explosion in the course of the same reaction, in which the investigator
had burned his hand. Dream I. He is to make phenylmagnesium-bromid;
he sees the apparatus with particular clearness, but he has substituted
himself for the magnesium. He is now in a curious swaying attitude. He
keeps repeating to himself, "This is the right thing, it is working, my feet
are beginning to dissolve and my knees are getting soft." Then he reaches
down and feels for his feet, and meanwhile (he does not know how) he
takes his legs out of the crucible, and then again he says to himself, "That
cannot be… . Yes, it must be so, it has been done correctly." Then he par-
tially awakens, and repeats the dream to himself, because he wants to
tell it to me. He is distinctly afraid of the analysis of the dream. He is
much excited during this semi-sleeping state, and repeats continually,
"Phenyl, phenyl." II. He is in … .ing with his whole family; at half-past
eleven. He is to be at the Schottenthor for a rendezvous with a certain
lady, but he does not wake up until half-past eleven. He says to himself,
"It is too late now; when you get there it will be half-past twelve." The
next instant he sees the whole family gathered about the table—his
mother and the servant girl with the soup-tureen with particular clear-
ness. Then he says to himself, "Well, if we are eating already, I certainly
can't get away." Analysis: He feels sure that even the first dream contains
a reference to the lady whom he is to meet at the rendezvous (the dream
was dreamed during the night before the expected meeting). The student
to whom he gave the instruction is a particularly unpleasant fellow; he
had said to the chemist: "That isn't right," because the magnesium was
still unaffected, and the latter answered as though he did not care any-
thing about it: "It certainly isn't right." He himself must be this student;
he is as indifferent towards his analysis as the student is towards his syn-
thesis; the He in the dream, however, who accomplishes the operation, is
myself. How unpleasant he must seem to me with his indifference to-
wards the success achieved! Moreover, he is the material with which the
analysis (synthesis) is made. For it is a question of the success of the
treatment. The legs in the dream recall an impression of the previous
evening. He met a lady at a dancing lesson whom he wished to conquer;
he pressed her to him so closely that she once cried out. After he had

71
stopped pressing against her legs, he felt her firm responding pressure
against his lower thighs as far as just above his knees, at the place men-
tioned in the dream. In this situation, then, the woman is the magnesium
in the retort, which is at last working. He is feminine towards me, as he
is masculine towards the woman. If it will work with the woman, the
treatment will also work. Feeling and becoming aware of himself in the
region of his knees refers to masturbation, and corresponds to his fatigue
of the previous day… . The rendezvous had actually been set for half-
past eleven. His wish to oversleep and to remain with his usual sexual
objects (that is, with masturbation) corresponds with his resistance.

72
Chapter 6
The Wish in dreams
That the dream should be nothing but a wish-fulfillment surely seemed
strange to us all—and that not alone because of the contradictions
offered by the anxiety dream.
After learning from the first analytical explanations that the dream
conceals sense and psychic validity, we could hardly expect so simple a
determination of this sense. According to the correct but concise defini-
tion of Aristotle, the dream is a continuation of thinking in sleep (in so
far as one sleeps). Considering that during the day our thoughts produce
such a diversity of psychic acts—judgments, conclusions, contradictions,
expectations, intentions, &c.—why should our sleeping thoughts be
forced to confine themselves to the production of wishes? Are there not,
on the contrary, many dreams that present a different psychic act in
dream form, e.g., a solicitude, and is not the very transparent father's
dream mentioned above of just such a nature? From the gleam of light
falling into his eyes while asleep the father draws the solicitous conclu-
sion that a candle has been upset and may have set fire to the corpse; he
transforms this conclusion into a dream by investing it with a senseful
situation enacted in the present tense. What part is played in this dream
by the wish-fulfillment, and which are we to suspect—the predominance
of the thought continued from, the waking state or of the thought incited
by the new sensory impression?
All these considerations are just, and force us to enter more deeply in-
to the part played by the wish-fulfillment in the dream, and into the sig-
nificance of the waking thoughts continued in sleep.
It is in fact the wish-fulfillment that has already induced us to separate
dreams into two groups. We have found some dreams that were plainly
wish-fulfillments; and others in which wish-fulfillment could not be re-
cognized, and was frequently concealed by every available means. In
this latter class of dreams we recognized the influence of the dream cen-
sor. The undisguised wish dreams were chiefly found in children, yet

73
fleeting open-hearted wish dreams seemed (I purposely emphasize this
word) to occur also in adults.
We may now ask whence the wish fulfilled in the dream originates.
But to what opposition or to what diversity do we refer this "whence"? I
think it is to the opposition between conscious daily life and a psychic
activity remaining unconscious which can only make itself noticeable
during the night. I thus find a threefold possibility for the origin of a
wish. Firstly, it may have been incited during the day, and owing to ex-
ternal circumstances failed to find gratification, there is thus left for the
night an acknowledged but unfulfilled wish. Secondly, it may come to
the surface during the day but be rejected, leaving an unfulfilled but sup-
pressed wish. Or, thirdly, it may have no relation to daily life, and be-
long to those wishes that originate during the night from the suppres-
sion. If we now follow our scheme of the psychic apparatus, we can loc-
alize a wish of the first order in the system Forec. We may assume that a
wish of the second order has been forced back from the Forec. system in-
to the Unc. system, where alone, if anywhere, it can maintain itself; while
a wish-feeling of the third order we consider altogether incapable of
leaving the Unc. system. This brings up the question whether wishes
arising from these different sources possess the same value for the
dream, and whether they have the same power to incite a dream.
On reviewing the dreams which we have at our disposal for answer-
ing this question, we are at once moved to add as a fourth source of the
dream-wish the actual wish incitements arising during the night, such as
thirst and sexual desire. It then becomes evident that the source of the
dream-wish does not affect its capacity to incite a dream. That a wish
suppressed during the day asserts itself in the dream can be shown by a
great many examples. I shall mention a very simple example of this class.
A somewhat sarcastic young lady, whose younger friend has become en-
gaged to be married, is asked throughout the day by her acquaintances
whether she knows and what she thinks of the fiancé. She answers with
unqualified praise, thereby silencing her own judgment, as she would
prefer to tell the truth, namely, that he is an ordinary person. The follow-
ing 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 number." Finally, we have learned from numerous analyses
that the wish in all dreams that have been subject to distortion has been
derived from the unconscious, and has been unable to come to percep-
tion in the waking state. Thus it would appear that all wishes are of the
same value and force for the dream formation.

74
 I am at present unable to prove that the state of affairs is really differ-
ent, but I am strongly inclined to assume a more stringent determination
of the dream-wish. Children's dreams leave no doubt that an unfulfilled
wish of the day may be the instigator of the dream. But we must not for-
get that it is, after all, the wish of a child, that it is a wish-feeling of in-
fantile strength only. I have a strong doubt whether an unfulfilled wish
from the day would suffice to create a dream in an adult. It would rather
seem that as we learn to control our impulses by intellectual activity, we
more and more reject as vain 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 psychic processes
longer than others. The differences are here the same as those found in
the gradual decline of the originally distinct 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 readily admit that the
wish instigators originating in conscious like contribute towards the in-
citement of dreams, but that is probably all. The dream would not origin-
ate if the foreconscious wish were not reinforced from another source.
That source is the unconscious. I believe that the conscious wish is a
dream inciter only if it succeeds in arousing a similar unconscious wish
which reinforces it. Following the suggestions obtained through the psy-
choanalysis of the neuroses, I believe that these unconscious wishes are
always active and ready for expression whenever they find an opportun-
ity to unite themselves with an emotion from conscious life, and that
they transfer their greater intensity to the lesser intensity of the latter.20 It
may therefore seem that the conscious wish alone has been realized in a
dream; but a slight peculiarity in the formation of this dream will put us
on the track of the powerful helper from the unconscious. These ever act-
ive and, as it were, immortal wishes from the unconscious recall the le-
gendary Titans who from time immemorial have borne the ponderous
mountains which were once rolled upon them by the victorious gods,
and which even now quiver from time to time from the convulsions of

[Link] share this character of indestructibility with all psychic acts that are really
unconscious—that is, with psychic acts belonging to the system of the unconscious
only. These paths are constantly open and never fall into disuse; they conduct the
discharge of the exciting process as often as it becomes endowed with unconscious
excitement To speak metaphorically they suffer the same form of annihilation as the
shades of the lower region in the Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment they
drank blood. The processes depending on the foreconscious system are destructible
in a different way. The psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on this difference.

75
their mighty limbs; I say that these wishes found in the repression are of
themselves of an infantile origin, as we have learned from the psycholo-
gical investigation of the neuroses. I should like, therefore, to withdraw
the opinion previously expressed that it is unimportant whence the
dream-wish originates, and replace it by another, as follows: The wish
manifested in the dream must be an infantile one. In the adult it origin-
ates in the Unc., while in the child, where no separation and censor as yet
exist between Forec. and Unc., or where these are only in the 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 nevertheless that it can be frequently demonstrated, even
when it was not suspected, and that it cannot be generally refuted. The
wish-feelings which remain from the conscious waking state are, there-
fore, relegated to the background in the dream formation. In the dream
content I shall attribute to them only the part attributed to the material of
actual sensations during sleep. If I now take into account those other
psychic instigations remaining from the waking state which are not
wishes, I shall only adhere to the line mapped out for me by this train of
thought. We may succeed in provisionally terminating the sum of energy
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 sort.
But we do not always succeed in accomplishing it, or in accomplishing it
perfectly. Unsolved problems, harassing cares, overwhelming impres-
sions continue the thinking activity even during sleep, maintaining
psychic processes in the system which we have termed the fore-
conscious. These mental processes continuing into sleep may be divided
into the following groups: 1, That which has not been terminated during
the day owing to casual prevention; 2, that which has been left unfin-
ished by temporary paralysis of our mental power, i.e. the unsolved; 3,
that which has been rejected and suppressed during the day. This unites
with a powerful group (4) formed by that which has been excited in our
Unc. during the day by the work of the foreconscious. Finally, we may
add group (5) consisting of the indifferent and hence unsettled impres-
sions of the day. We should not underrate the psychic intensities intro-
duced into sleep by these remnants of waking life, especially those em-
anating from the group of the unsolved. These excitations surely contin-
ue to strive for expression during the night, and we may assume with
equal certainty that the sleeping state renders impossible the usual con-
tinuation of the excitement in the foreconscious and the termination of
the excitement by its becoming conscious. As far as we can normally

76
become conscious of our mental processes, even during the night, in so
far we are not asleep. I shall not venture to state what change is pro-
duced in the Forec. system by the sleeping state, but there is no doubt
that the psychological character of sleep is essentially due to the change
of energy in this very system, which also dominates the approach to
motility, which is paralyzed during sleep. In contradistinction to this,
there seems to be nothing in the psychology of the dream to warrant the
assumption that sleep produces any but secondary changes in the condi-
tions of the Unc. system. Hence, for the nocturnal excitation in the Force,
there remains no other path than that followed by the wish excitements
from the Unc. This excitation must seek reinforcement from the Unc.,
and follow the detours of the unconscious excitations. But what is the re-
lation of the foreconscious day remnants to the dream? There is no doubt
that they penetrate abundantly into the dream, that they utilize the
dream content to obtrude themselves upon consciousness even during
the night; indeed, they occasionally even dominate the dream content,
and impel it to continue the work of the day; it is also certain that the day
remnants may just as well have any other character as that of wishes; but
it is highly instructive and even decisive for the theory of wish-fulfill-
ment to see what conditions they must comply with in order to be re-
ceived into the dream. Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above as
examples, e.g., the dream in which my friend Otto seems to show the
symptoms of Basedow's disease. My friend Otto's appearance occasioned
me some concern during the day, and this worry, like everything else re-
ferring to this person, affected me. I may also assume that these feelings
followed me into sleep. I was probably bent on finding out what was the
matter with him. In the night my worry found expression in the dream
which I have reported, the content of which was not only senseless, but
failed to show any wish-fulfillment. But I began to investigate for the
source of this incongruous expression of the solicitude felt during the
day, and analysis revealed the connection. I identified my friend Otto
with a certain Baron L. and myself with a Professor R. There was only
one explanation for my being impelled to select just this substitution for
the day thought. I must have always been prepared in the Unc. to identi-
fy myself with Professor R., as it meant the realization of one of the im-
mortal infantile wishes, viz. that of becoming great. Repulsive ideas re-
specting my friend, that would certainly have been repudiated in a wak-
ing state, took advantage of the opportunity to creep into the dream, but
the worry of the day likewise found some form of expression through a
substitution in the dream content. The day thought, which was no wish

77
in itself but rather a worry, had in some way to find a connection with
the infantile now unconscious and suppressed wish, which then allowed
it, though already properly prepared, to "originate" for consciousness.
The more dominating this worry, the stronger must be the connection to
be established; between the contents of the wish and that of the worry
there need be no connection, nor was there one in any of our examples.
We can now sharply define the significance of the unconscious wish for
the dream. It may be admitted that there is a whole class of dreams in
which the incitement originates preponderatingly or even exclusively
from the remnants of daily life; and I believe that even my cherished de-
sire to become at some future time a "professor extraordinarius" would
have allowed me to slumber undisturbed that night had not my worry
about my friend's health been still active. But this worry alone would not
have produced a dream; the motive power needed by the dream had to
be contributed by a wish, and it was the affair of the worriment to pro-
cure for itself such wish as a motive power of the dream. To speak figur-
atively, it is quite possible that a day thought plays the part of the con-
tractor (entrepreneur) in the dream. But it is known that no matter what
idea the contractor may have in mind, and how desirous he may be of
putting it into operation, he can do nothing without capital; he must de-
pend upon a capitalist to defray the necessary expenses, and this capital-
ist, who supplies the psychic expenditure for the dream is invariably and
indisputably a wish from the unconscious, no matter what the nature of
the waking thought may be. In other cases the capitalist himself is the
contractor for the dream; this, indeed, seems to be the more usual case.
An unconscious wish is produced by the day's work, which in turn cre-
ates the dream. The dream processes, moreover, run parallel with all the
other possibilities of the economic relationship used here as an illustra-
tion. Thus, the entrepreneur may contribute some capital himself, or sev-
eral entrepreneurs may seek the aid of the same capitalist, or several cap-
italists may jointly supply the capital required by the entrepreneur. Thus
there are dreams produced by more than one dream-wish, and many
similar variations which may readily be passed over and are of no fur-
ther interest to us. What we have left unfinished in this discussion of the
dream-wish we shall be able to develop later. The "tertium compara-
tionis" in the comparisons just employed—i.e. the sum placed at our free
disposal in proper allotment—admits of still finer application for the il-
lustration of the dream structure. We can recognize in most dreams a
center especially supplied with perceptible intensity. This is regularly the
direct representation of the wish-fulfillment; for, if we undo the

78
displacements of the dream-work by a process of retrogression, we find
that the psychic intensity of the elements in the dream thoughts is re-
placed by the perceptible intensity of the elements in the dream content.
The elements adjoining the wish-fulfillment have frequently nothing to
do with its sense, but prove to be descendants of painful thoughts which
oppose the wish. But, owing to their frequently artificial connection with
the central element, they have acquired sufficient intensity to enable
them to come to expression. Thus, the force of expression of the wish-ful-
fillment is diffused over a certain sphere of association, within which it
raises to expression all elements, including those that are in themselves
impotent. In dreams having several strong wishes we can readily separ-
ate from one another the spheres of the individual wish-fulfillments; the
gaps in the dream likewise can often be explained as boundary zones.
Although the foregoing remarks have considerably limited the signific-
ance of the day remnants for the dream, it will nevertheless be worth our
while to give them some attention. For they must be a necessary ingredi-
ent in the formation of the dream, inasmuch as experience reveals the
surprising fact that every dream shows in its content a connection with
some impression of a recent day, often of the most indifferent kind. So
far we have failed to see any necessity for this addition to the dream mix-
ture. This necessity appears only when we follow closely the part played
by the unconscious wish, and then seek information in the psychology of
the neuroses. We thus learn that the unconscious idea, as such, is alto-
gether incapable of entering into the foreconscious, and that it can exert
an influence there only by uniting with a harmless idea already belong-
ing to the foreconscious, to which it transfers its intensity and under
which it allows itself to be concealed. This is the fact of transference
which furnishes an explanation for so many surprising occurrences in
the psychic life of neurotics. The idea from the foreconscious which thus
obtains an unmerited abundance of intensity may be left unchanged by
the transference, or it may have forced upon it a modification from the
content of the transferring idea. I trust the reader will pardon my fond-
ness for comparisons from daily life, but I feel tempted to say that the re-
lations existing for the repressed idea are similar to the situations exist-
ing in Austria for the American dentist, who is forbidden to practise un-
less he gets permission from a regular physician to use his name on the
public signboard and thus cover the legal requirements. Moreover, just
as it is naturally not the busiest physicians who form such alliances with
dental practitioners, so in the psychic life only such foreconscious or con-
scious ideas are chosen to cover a repressed idea as have not themselves

79
attracted much of the attention which is operative in the foreconscious.
The unconscious entangles with its connections preferentially either
those impressions and ideas of the foreconscious which have been left
unnoticed as indifferent, or those that have soon been deprived of this at-
tention through rejection. It is a familiar fact from the association studies
confirmed by every experience, that ideas which have formed intimate
connections in one direction assume an almost negative attitude to
whole groups of new connections. I once tried from this principle to de-
velop a theory for hysterical paralysis. If we assume that the same need
for the transference of the repressed ideas which we have learned to
know from the analysis of the neuroses makes its influence felt in the
dream as well, we can at once explain two riddles of the dream, viz. that
every dream analysis shows an interweaving of a recent impression, and
that this recent element is frequently of the most indifferent character.
We may add what we have already learned elsewhere, that these recent
and indifferent elements come so frequently into the dream content as a
substitute for the most deep-lying of the dream thoughts, for the further
reason that they have least to fear from the resisting censor. But while
this freedom from censorship explains only the preference for trivial ele-
ments, the constant presence of recent elements points to the fact that
there is a need for transference. Both groups of impressions satisfy the
demand of the repression for material still free from associations, the in-
different ones because they have offered no inducement for extensive as-
sociations, and the recent ones because they have had insufficient time to
form such associations. We thus see that the day remnants, among which
we may now include the indifferent impressions when they participate
in the dream formation, not only borrow from the Unc. the motive
power at the disposal of the repressed wish, but also offer to the uncon-
scious something indispensable, namely, the attachment necessary to the
transference. If we here attempted to penetrate more deeply into the
psychic processes, we should first have to throw more light on the play
of emotions between the foreconscious and the unconscious, to which,
indeed, we are urged by the study of the psychoneuroses, whereas the
dream itself offers no assistance in this respect. Just one further remark
about the day remnants. There is no doubt that they are the actual dis-
turbers of sleep, and not the dream, which, on the contrary, strives to
guard sleep. But we shall return to this point later. We have so far dis-
cussed the dream-wish, we have traced it to the sphere of the Unc., and
analyzed its relations to the day remnants, which in turn may be either
wishes, psychic emotions of any other kind, or simply recent

80
impressions. We have thus made room for any claims that may be made
for the importance of conscious thought activity in dream formations in
all its variations. Relying upon our thought series, it would not be at all
impossible for us to explain even those extreme cases in which the dream
as a continuer of the day work brings to a happy conclusion and un-
solved problem possess an example, the analysis of which might reveal
the infantile or repressed wish source furnishing such alliance and suc-
cessful strengthening of the efforts of the foreconscious activity. But we
have not come one step nearer a solution of the riddle: Why can the un-
conscious furnish the motive power for the wish-fulfillment only during
sleep? The answer to this question must throw light on the psychic
nature of wishes; and it will be given with the aid of the diagram of the
psychic apparatus. We do not doubt that even this apparatus attained its
present perfection through a long course of development. Let us attempt
to restore it as it existed in an early phase of its activity. From assump-
tions, to be confirmed elsewhere, we know that at first the apparatus
strove to keep as free from excitement as possible, and in its first forma-
tion, therefore, the scheme took the form of a reflex apparatus, which en-
abled it promptly to discharge through the motor tracts any sensible
stimulus reaching it from without. But this simple function was dis-
turbed by the wants of life, which likewise furnish the impulse for the
further development of the apparatus. The wants of life first manifested
themselves to it in the form of the great physical needs. The excitement
aroused by the inner want seeks an outlet in motility, which may be des-
ignated as "inner changes" or as an "expression of the emotions." The
hungry child cries or fidgets helplessly, but its situation remains un-
changed; for the excitation proceeding from an inner want requires, not a
momentary outbreak, but a force working continuously. A change can
occur only if in some way a feeling of gratification is experi-
enced—which in the case of the child must be through outside help—in
order to remove the inner excitement. An essential constituent of this ex-
perience is the appearance of a certain perception (of food in our ex-
ample), the memory picture of which thereafter remains associated with
the memory trace of the excitation of want. Thanks to the established
connection, there results at the next appearance of this want a psychic
feeling which revives the memory picture of the former perception, and
thus recalls the former perception itself, i.e. it actually re-establishes the
situation of the first gratification. We call such a feeling a wish; the re-
appearance of the perception constitutes the wish-fulfillment, and the
full revival of the perception by the want excitement constitutes the

81
shortest road to the wish-fulfillment. We may assume a primitive condi-
tion of the psychic apparatus in which this road is really followed, i.e.
where the wishing merges into an hallucination, This first psychic activ-
ity therefore aims at an identity of perception, i.e. it aims at a repetition
of that perception which is connected with the fulfillment of the want.
This primitive mental activity must have been modified by bitter practic-
al experience into a more expedient secondary activity. The establish-
ment of the identity perception on the short regressive road within the
apparatus does not in another respect carry with it the result which inev-
itably follows the revival of the same perception from without. The grati-
fication does not take place, and the want continues. In order to equalize
the internal with the external sum of energy, the former must be continu-
ally maintained, just as actually happens in the hallucinatory psychoses
and in the deliriums of hunger which exhaust their psychic capacity in
clinging to the object desired. In order to make more appropriate use of
the psychic force, it becomes necessary to inhibit the full regression so as
to prevent it from extending beyond the image of memory, whence it can
select other paths leading ultimately to the establishment of the desired
identity from the outer world. This inhibition and consequent deviation
from the excitation becomes the task of a second system which domin-
ates the voluntary motility, i.e. through whose activity the expenditure of
motility is now devoted to previously recalled purposes. But this entire
complicated mental activity which works its way from the memory pic-
ture to the establishment of the perception identity from the outer world
merely represents a detour which has been forced upon the wish-fulfill-
ment by experience.21 Thinking is indeed nothing but the equivalent of
the hallucinatory wish; and if the dream be called a wish-fulfillment this
becomes self-evident, as nothing but a wish can impel our psychic appar-
atus to activity. The dream, which in fulfilling its wishes follows the
short regressive path, thereby preserves for us only an example of the
primary form of the psychic apparatus which has been abandoned as in-
expedient. What once ruled in the waking state when the psychic life
was still young and unfit seems to have been banished into the sleeping
state, just as we see again in the nursery the bow and arrow, the dis-
carded primitive weapons of grown-up humanity. The dream is a frag-
ment of the abandoned psychic life of the child. In the psychoses these
modes of operation of the psychic apparatus, which are normally

[Link] Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilment of the dream: "Sans fatigue sérieuse,
sans être obligé de recourir à cette lutte opinâtre et longue qui use et corrode les
jouissances poursuivies."

82
suppressed in the waking state, reassert themselves, and then betray
their inability to satisfy our wants in the outer world. The unconscious
wish-feelings evidently strive to assert themselves during the day also,
and the fact of transference and the psychoses teach us that they en-
deavor to penetrate to consciousness and dominate motility by the road
leading through the system of the foreconscious. It is, therefore, the cen-
sor lying between the Unc. and the Forec., the assumption of which is
forced upon us by the dream, that we have to recognize and honor as the
guardian of our psychic health. But is it not carelessness on the part of
this guardian to diminish its vigilance during the night and to allow the
suppressed emotions of the Unc. to come to expression, thus again mak-
ing possible the hallucinatory regression? I think not, for when the critic-
al guardian goes to rest—and we have proof that his slumber is not pro-
found—he takes care to close the gate to motility. No matter what feel-
ings from the otherwise inhibited Unc. may roam about on the scene,
they need not be interfered with; they remain harmless because they are
unable to put in motion the motor apparatus which alone can exert a
modifying influence upon the outer world. Sleep guarantees the security
of the fortress which is under guard. Conditions are less harmless when
a displacement of forces is produced, not through a nocturnal diminu-
tion in the operation of the critical censor, but through pathological en-
feeblement of the latter or through pathological reinforcement of the un-
conscious excitations, and this while the foreconscious is charged with
energy and the avenues to motility are open. The guardian is then over-
powered, the unconscious excitations subdue the Forec.; through it they
dominate our speech and actions, or they enforce the hallucinatory re-
gression, thus governing an apparatus not designed for them by virtue of
the attraction exerted by the perceptions on the distribution of our
psychic energy. We call this condition a psychosis. We are now in the
best position to complete our psychological construction, which has been
interrupted by the introduction of the two systems, Unc. and Forec. We
have still, however, ample reason for giving further consideration to the
wish as the sole psychic motive power in the dream. We have explained
that the reason why the dream is in every case a wish realization is be-
cause it is a product of the Unc., which knows no other aim in its activity
but the fulfillment of wishes, and which has no other forces at its dispos-
al but wish-feelings. If we avail ourselves for a moment longer of the
right to elaborate from the dream interpretation such far-reaching psy-
chological speculations, we are in duty bound to demonstrate that we
are thereby bringing the dream into a relationship which may also

83
comprise other psychic structures. If there exists a system of the Unc.—or
something sufficiently analogous to it for the purpose of our discus-
sion—the dream cannot be its sole manifestation; every dream may be a
wish-fulfillment, but there must be other forms of abnormal wish-fulfill-
ment beside this of dreams. Indeed, the theory of all psychoneurotic
symptoms culminates in the proposition that they too must be taken as
wish-fulfillments of the unconscious. Our explanation makes the dream
only the first member of a group most important for the psychiatrist, an
understanding of which means the solution of the purely psychological
part of the psychiatric problem. But other members of this group of
wish-fulfillments, e.g., the hysterical symptoms, evince one essential
quality which I have so far failed to find in the dream. Thus, from the in-
vestigations frequently referred to in this treatise, I know that the forma-
tion of an hysterical symptom necessitates the combination of both
streams of our psychic life. The symptom is not merely the expression of
a realized unconscious wish, but it must be joined by another wish from
the foreconscious which is fulfilled by the same symptom; so that the
symptom is at least doubly determined, once by each one of the conflict-
ing systems. Just as in the dream, there is no limit to further over-de-
termination. The determination not derived from the Unc. is, as far as I
can see, invariably a stream of thought in reaction against the uncon-
scious wish, e.g., a self-punishment. Hence I may say, in general, that an
hysterical symptom originates only where two contrasting wish-fulfill-
ments, having their source in different psychic systems, are able to com-
bine in one expression. (Compare my latest formulation of the origin of
the hysterical symptoms in a treatise published by the Zeitschrift für
Sexualwissenschaft, by Hirschfeld and others, 1908). Examples on this
point would prove of little value, as nothing but a complete unveiling of
the complication in question would carry conviction. I therefore content
myself with the mere assertion, and will cite an example, not for convic-
tion but for explication. The hysterical vomiting of a female patient
proved, on the one hand, to be the realization of an unconscious fancy
from the time of puberty, that she might be continuously pregnant and
have a multitude of children, and this was subsequently united with the
wish that she might have them from as many men as possible. Against
this immoderate wish there arose a powerful defensive impulse. But as
the vomiting might spoil the patient's figure and beauty, so that she
would not find favor in the eyes of mankind, the symptom was therefore
in keeping with her punitive trend of thought, and, being thus admiss-
ible from both sides, it was allowed to become a reality. This is the same

84
manner of consenting to a wish-fulfillment which the queen of the
Parthians chose for the triumvir Crassus. Believing that he had under-
taken the campaign out of greed for gold, she caused molten gold to be
poured into the throat of the corpse. "Now hast thou what thou hast
longed for." As yet we know of the dream only that it expresses a wish-
fulfillment of the unconscious; and apparently the dominating fore-
conscious permits this only after it has subjected the wish to some distor-
tions. We are really in no position to demonstrate regularly a stream of
thought antagonistic to the dream-wish which is realized in the dream as
in its counterpart. Only now and then have we found in the dream traces
of reaction formations, as, for instance, the tenderness toward friend R.
in the "uncle dream." But the contribution from the foreconscious, which
is missing here, may be found in another place. While the dominating
system has withdrawn on the wish to sleep, the dream may bring to ex-
pression with manifold distortions a wish from the Unc., and realize this
wish by producing the necessary changes of energy in the psychic appar-
atus, and may finally retain it through the entire duration of sleep.22 This
persistent wish to sleep on the part of the foreconscious in general facilit-
ates the formation of the dream. Let us refer to the dream of the father
who, by the gleam of light from the death chamber, was brought to the
conclusion that the body has been set on fire. We have shown that one of
the psychic forces decisive in causing the father to form this conclusion,
instead of being 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 pro-
ceeding from the repression probably escape us, because we are unable
to analyze this dream. But as a second motive power of the dream we
may mention the father's desire to sleep, for, like the life of the child, the
sleep of the father is prolonged for a moment by the dream. The underly-
ing motive is: "Let the dream go on, otherwise I must wake up." As in
this dream so also in all other dreams, the wish to sleep lends its support
to the unconscious wish. We reported dreams which were apparently
dreams of convenience. But, properly speaking, all dreams may claim
this designation. The efficacy of the wish to continue to sleep is the most
easily recognized in the waking dreams, which so transform the object-
ive sensory stimulus as to render it compatible with the continuance of
sleep; they interweave this stimulus with the dream in order to rob it of
any claims it might make as a warning to the outer world. But this wish
to continue to sleep must also participate in the formation of all other

[Link] idea has been borrowed from The Theory of Sleep by Liébault, who revived
hypnotic investigation in our days. (Du Sommeil provoqué, etc.; Paris, 1889.)

85
dreams which may disturb the sleeping state from within only. "Now,
then, sleep on; why, it's but a dream"; this is in many cases the sugges-
tion of the Forec. to consciousness when the dream goes too far; and this
also describes in a general way the attitude of our dominating psychic
activity toward dreaming, though the thought remains tacit. I must draw
the conclusion that throughout our entire sleeping state we are just as
certain that we are dreaming as we are certain that we are sleeping. We
are compelled to disregard the objection urged against this conclusion
that our consciousness is never directed to a knowledge of the former,
and that it is directed to a knowledge of the latter only on special occa-
sions when the censor is unexpectedly surprised. Against this objection
we may say that there are persons who are entirely conscious of their
sleeping and dreaming, and who are apparently endowed with the con-
scious faculty of guiding their dream life. Such a dreamer, when dissatis-
fied with the course taken by the dream, breaks it off without awaken-
ing, and begins it anew in order to continue it with a different turn, like
the popular author who, on request, gives a happier ending to his play.
Or, at another time, if placed by the dream in a sexually exciting situ-
ation, he thinks in his sleep: "I do not care to continue this dream and ex-
haust myself by a pollution; I prefer to defer it in favor of a real
situation."

86
Chapter 7
The Function of the dream
Since we know that the foreconscious is suspended during the night by
the wish to sleep, we can proceed to an intelligent investigation of the
dream process. But let us first sum up the knowledge of this process
already gained. We have shown that the waking activity leaves day rem-
nants from which the sum of energy cannot be entirely removed; or the
waking activity revives during the day one of the unconscious wishes; or
both conditions occur simultaneously; we have already discovered the
many variations that may take place. The unconscious wish has already
made its way to the day remnants, either during the day or at any rate
with the beginning of sleep, and has effected a transference to it. This
produces a wish transferred to the recent material, or the suppressed re-
cent wish comes to life again through a reinforcement from the uncon-
scious. This wish now endeavors to make its way to consciousness on the
normal path of the mental processes through the foreconscious, to which
indeed it belongs through one of its constituent elements. It is confron-
ted, however, by the censor, which is still active, and to the influence of
which it now succumbs. It now takes on the distortion for which the way
has already been paved by its transference to the recent material. Thus
far it is in the way of becoming something resembling an obsession, de-
lusion, or the like, i.e. a thought reinforced by a transference and distor-
ted in expression by the censor. But its further progress is now checked
through the dormant state of the foreconscious; this system has appar-
ently protected itself against invasion by diminishing its excitements.
The dream process, therefore, takes the regressive course, which has just
been opened by the peculiarity of the sleeping state, and thereby follows
the attraction exerted on it by the memory groups, which themselves ex-
ist in part only as visual energy not yet translated into terms of the later
systems. On its way to regression the dream takes on the form of
dramatization. The subject of compression will be discussed later. The
dream process has now terminated the second part of its repeatedly

87
impeded course. The first part expended itself progressively from the
unconscious scenes or phantasies to the foreconscious, while the second
part gravitates from the advent of the censor back to the perceptions. But
when the dream process becomes a content of perception it has, so to
speak, eluded the obstacle set up in the Forec. by the censor and by the
sleeping state. It succeeds in drawing attention to itself and in being no-
ticed by consciousness. For consciousness, which means to us a sensory
organ for the reception of psychic qualities, may receive stimuli from
two sources—first, from the periphery of the entire apparatus, viz. from
the perception system, and, secondly, from the pleasure and pain stim-
uli, which constitute the sole psychic quality produced in the transforma-
tion of energy within the apparatus. All other processes in the system,
even those in the foreconscious, are devoid of any psychic quality, and
are therefore not objects of consciousness inasmuch as they do not fur-
nish pleasure or pain for perception. We shall have to assume that those
liberations of pleasure and pain automatically regulate the outlet of the
occupation processes. But in order to make possible more delicate func-
tions, it was later found necessary to render the course of the presenta-
tions more independent of the manifestations of pain. To accomplish this
the Forec. system needed some qualities of its own which could attract
consciousness, and most probably received them through the connection
of the foreconscious processes with the memory system of the signs of
speech, which is not devoid of qualities. Through the qualities of this
system, consciousness, which had hitherto been a sensory organ only for
the perceptions, now becomes also a sensory organ for a part of our men-
tal processes. Thus we have now, as it were, two sensory surfaces, one
directed to perceptions and the other to the foreconscious mental
processes.
I must assume that the sensory surface of consciousness devoted to the
Forec. is rendered less excitable by sleep than that directed to the P-sys-
tems. The giving up of interest for the nocturnal mental processes is in-
deed purposeful. Nothing is to disturb the mind; the Forec. wants to
sleep. But once the dream becomes a perception, it is then capable of ex-
citing consciousness through the qualities thus gained. The sensory stim-
ulus accomplishes what it was really destined for, namely, it directs a
part of the energy at the disposal of the Forec. in the form of attention
upon the stimulant. We must, therefore, admit that the dream invariably
awakens us, that is, it puts into activity a part of the dormant force of the
Forec. This force imparts to the dream that influence which we have des-
ignated as secondary elaboration for the sake of connection and

88
comprehensibility. This means that the dream is treated by it like any
other content of perception; it is subjected to the same ideas of expecta-
tion, as far at least as the material admits. As far as the direction is con-
cerned in this third part of the dream, it may be said that here again the
movement is progressive.
To avoid misunderstanding, it will not be amiss to say a few words
about the temporal peculiarities of these dream processes. In a very in-
teresting discussion, apparently suggested by Maury's puzzling guillot-
ine dream, Goblet tries to demonstrate that the dream requires no other
time than the transition period between sleeping and awakening. The
awakening requires time, as the dream takes place during that period.
One is inclined to believe that the final picture of the dream is so strong
that it forces the dreamer to awaken; but, as a matter of fact, this picture
is strong only because the dreamer is already very near awakening when
it appears. "Un rêve c'est un réveil qui commence."
It has already been emphasized by Dugas that Goblet was forced to re-
pudiate many facts in order to generalize his theory. There are,
moreover, dreams from which we do not awaken, e.g., some 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
awakening. On the contrary, we must consider it probable that the first
part of the dream-work begins during the day when we are still under
the domination of the foreconscious. The second phase of the dream-
work, viz. the modification through the censor, the attraction by the un-
conscious scenes, and the penetration to perception must continue
throughout the night. And we are probably always right when we assert
that we feel as though we had been dreaming the whole night, although
we cannot say what. I do not, however, think it necessary 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 distortion of the censor, and con-
sequently the change of direction to regression, and so on. We were
forced to form such a succession for the sake of description; in reality,
however, it is much rather a matter of simultaneously trying this path
and that, and of emotions fluctuating to and fro, until finally, owing to
the most expedient distribution, one particular grouping is secured
which remains. From certain personal experiences, I am myself inclined
to believe that the dream-work often requires more than one day and
one night to produce its result; if this be true, the extraordinary art mani-
fested in the construction of the dream loses all its marvels. In my

89
opinion, even the regard for comprehensibility as an occurrence of per-
ception may take effect before the dream attracts consciousness to itself.
To be sure, from now on the process is accelerated, as the dream is
henceforth subjected to the same treatment as any other perception. It is
like fireworks, which require hours of preparation and only a moment
for ignition.
Through the dream-work the dream process now gains either suffi-
cient intensity to attract consciousness to itself and arouse the fore-
conscious, which is quite independent of the time or profundity of sleep,
or, its intensity being insufficient it must wait until it meets the attention
which is set in motion immediately before awakening. Most dreams
seem to operate with relatively slight psychic intensities, for they wait
for the awakening. This, however, explains the fact that we regularly
perceive something dreamt on being suddenly aroused from a sound
sleep. Here, as well as in spontaneous awakening, the first glance strikes
the perception content created by the dream-work, while the next strikes
the one produced from without.
But of greater theoretical interest are those dreams which are capable
of waking us in the midst of sleep. We must bear in mind the expediency
elsewhere universally demonstrated, and ask ourselves why the dream
or the unconscious wish has the power to disturb sleep, i.e. the fulfill-
ment of the foreconscious wish. This is probably due to certain relations
of energy into which we have no insight. If we possessed such insight we
should probably find that the freedom given to the dream and the ex-
penditure of a certain amount of detached attention represent for the
dream an economy in energy, keeping in view the fact that the uncon-
scious must be held in check at night just as during the day. We know
from experience that the dream, even if it interrupts sleep, repeatedly
during the same night, still remains compatible with sleep. We wake up
for an instant, and immediately resume our sleep. It is like driving off a
fly during sleep, we awake ad hoc, and when we resume our sleep we
have removed the disturbance. As demonstrated by familiar examples
from the sleep of wet nurses, &c., the fulfillment of the wish to sleep is
quite compatible with the retention of a certain amount of attention in a
given direction.
But we must here take cognizance of an objection that is based on a
better knowledge of the unconscious processes. Although we have
ourselves described the unconscious wishes as always active, we have,
nevertheless, asserted that they are not sufficiently strong during the day
to make themselves perceptible. But when we sleep, and the unconscious

90
wish has shown its power to form a dream, and with it to awaken the
foreconscious, why, then, does this power become exhausted after the
dream has been taken cognizance of? Would it not seem more probable
that the dream should continually renew itself, like the troublesome fly
which, when driven away, takes pleasure in returning again and again?
What justifies our assertion that the dream removes the disturbance of
sleep?
That the unconscious wishes always remain active is quite true. They
represent paths which are passable whenever a sum of excitement makes
use of them. Moreover, a remarkable peculiarity of the unconscious pro-
cesses is the fact that they remain indestructible. Nothing can be brought
to an end in the unconscious; nothing can cease or be forgotten. This im-
pression is most strongly gained in the study of the neuroses, especially
of hysteria. The unconscious stream of thought which leads to the dis-
charge through an attack becomes passable again as soon as there is an
accumulation of a sufficient amount of excitement. The mortification
brought on thirty years ago, after having gained access to the uncon-
scious affective source, operates during all these thirty years like a recent
one. Whenever its memory is touched, it is revived and shows itself to be
supplied with the excitement which is discharged in a motor attack. It is
just here that the office of psychotherapy begins, its task being to bring
about adjustment and forgetfulness for the unconscious processes.
Indeed, the fading of memories and the flagging of affects, which we are
apt to take as self-evident and to explain as a primary influence of time
on the psychic memories, are in reality secondary changes brought about
by painstaking work. It is the foreconscious that accomplishes this work;
and the only course to be pursued by psychotherapy is the subjugate the
Unc, to the domination of the Forec.
There are, therefore, two exits for the individual unconscious emotion-
al process. It is either left to itself, in which case it ultimately breaks
through somewhere and secures for once a discharge for its excitation in-
to motility; or it succumbs to the influence of the foreconscious, and its
excitation becomes confined through this influence instead of being dis-
charged. It is the latter process that occurs in the dream. Owing to the
fact that it is directed by the conscious excitement, the energy from the
Forec., which confronts the dream when grown to perception, restricts
the unconscious excitement of the dream and renders it harmless as a
disturbing factor. When the dreamer wakes up for a moment, he has ac-
tually chased away the fly that has threatened to disturb his sleep. We
can now understand that it is really more expedient and economical to

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give full sway to the unconscious wish, and clear its way to regression so
that it may form a dream, and then restrict and adjust this dream by
means of a small expenditure of foreconscious labor, than to curb the un-
conscious throughout the entire period of sleep. We should, indeed, ex-
pect that the dream, even if it was not originally an expedient process,
would have acquired some function in the play of forces of the psychic
life. We now see what this function is. The dream has taken it upon itself
to bring the liberated excitement of the Unc. back under the domination
of the foreconscious; it thus affords relief for the excitement of the Unc.
and acts as a safety-valve for the latter, and at the same time it insures
the sleep of the foreconscious at a slight expenditure of the waking state.
Like the other psychic formations of its group, the dream offers itself as a
compromise serving simultaneously both systems by fulfilling both
wishes in so far as they are compatible with each other. A glance at
Robert's "elimination theory," will show that we must agree with this au-
thor in his main point, viz. in the determination of the function of the
dream, though we differ from him in our hypotheses and in our treat-
ment of the dream process.
The above qualification—in so far as the two wishes are compatible
with each other—contains a suggestion that there may be cases in which
the function of the dream suffers shipwreck. The dream process is in the
first instance admitted as a wish-fulfillment of the unconscious, but if
this tentative wish-fulfillment disturbs the foreconscious to such an ex-
tent that the latter can no longer maintain its rest, the dream then breaks
the compromise and fails to perform the second part of its task. It is then
at once broken off, and replaced by complete wakefulness. Here, too, it is
not really the fault of the dream, if, while ordinarily the guardian of
sleep, it is here compelled to appear as the disturber of sleep, nor should
this cause us to entertain any doubts as to its efficacy. This is not the only
case in the organism in which an otherwise efficacious arrangement be-
came inefficacious and disturbing as soon as some element is changed in
the conditions of its origin; the disturbance then serves at least the new
purpose of announcing the change, and calling into play against it the
means of adjustment of the organism. In this connection, I naturally bear
in mind the case of the anxiety dream, and in order not to have the ap-
pearance of trying to exclude this testimony against the theory of wish-
fulfillment wherever I encounter it, I will attempt an explanation of the
anxiety dream, at least offering some suggestions.
That a psychic process developing anxiety may still be a wish-fulfill-
ment has long ceased to impress us as a contradiction. We may explain

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this occurrence by the fact that the wish belongs to one system (the Unc.),
while by the other system (the Forec.), this wish has been rejected and
suppressed. The subjection of the Unc. by the Forec. is not complete even
in perfect psychic health; the amount of this suppression shows the de-
gree of our psychic normality. Neurotic symptoms show that there is a
conflict between the two systems; the symptoms are the results of a com-
promise of this conflict, and they temporarily put an end to it. On the
one hand, they afford the Unc. an outlet for the discharge of its excite-
ment, and serve it as a sally port, while, on the other hand, they give the
Forec. the capability of dominating the Unc. to some extent. It is highly
instructive to consider, e.g., the significance of any hysterical phobia or
of an agoraphobia. Suppose a neurotic incapable of crossing the street
alone, which we would justly call a "symptom." We attempt to remove
this symptom by urging him to the action which he deems himself incap-
able of. The result will be an attack of anxiety, just as an attack of anxiety
in the street has often been the cause of establishing an agoraphobia. We
thus learn that the symptom has been constituted in order to guard
against the outbreak of the anxiety. The phobia is thrown before the
anxiety like a fortress on the frontier.
Unless we enter into the part played by the affects in these processes,
which can be done here only imperfectly, we cannot continue our discus-
sion. Let us therefore advance the proposition that the reason why the
suppression of the unconscious becomes absolutely necessary is because,
if the discharge of presentation should be left to itself, it would develop
an affect in the Unc. which originally bore the character of pleasure, but
which, since the appearance of the repression, bears the character of
pain. The aim, as well as the result, of the suppression is to stop the de-
velopment of this pain. The suppression extends over the unconscious
ideation, because the liberation of pain might emanate from the ideation.
The foundation is here laid for a very definite assumption concerning the
nature of the affective development. It is regarded as a motor or second-
ary activity, the key to the innervation of which is located in the present-
ations of the Unc. Through the domination of the Forec. these presenta-
tions become, as it were, throttled and inhibited at the exit of the
emotion-developing impulses. The danger, which is due to the fact that
the Forec. ceases to occupy the energy, therefore consists in the fact that
the unconscious excitations liberate such an affect as—in consequence of
the repression that has previously taken place—can only be perceived as
pain or anxiety.

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 This danger is released through the full sway of the dream process.
The determinations for its realization consist in the fact that repressions
have taken place, and that the suppressed emotional wishes shall be-
come sufficiently strong. They thus stand entirely without the psycholo-
gical realm of the dream structure. Were it not for the fact that our sub-
ject is connected through just one factor, namely, the freeing of the Unc.
during sleep, with the subject of the development of anxiety, I could dis-
pense with discussion of the anxiety dream, and thus avoid all obscurit-
ies connected with it.
As I have often repeated, the theory of the anxiety belongs to the psy-
chology of the neuroses. I would say that the anxiety in the dream is an
anxiety problem and not a dream problem. We have nothing further to
do with it after having once demonstrated its point of contact with the
subject of the dream process. There is only one thing left for me to do. As
I have asserted that the neurotic anxiety originates from sexual sources, I
can subject anxiety dreams to analysis in order to demonstrate the sexual
material in their dream thoughts.
For good reasons I refrain from citing here any of the numerous ex-
amples placed at my disposal by neurotic patients, but prefer to give
anxiety dreams from young persons.
Personally, I have had no real anxiety dream for decades, but I recall
one from my seventh or eighth year which I subjected to interpretation
about thirty years later. The dream was very vivid, and showed me my
beloved mother, with 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. The very tall
figures—draped in a peculiar manner—with beaks, I had taken from the
illustrations of Philippson's bible; I believe they represented deities with
heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian tomb relief. The analysis also
introduced the reminiscence of a naughty janitor's boy, who used to play
with us children on the meadow in front of the house; I would add that
his name was Philip. I feel that I first heard from this boy the vulgar
word signifying sexual intercourse, which is replaced among the edu-
cated by the Latin "coitus," but to which the dream distinctly alludes by
the selection of the birds' heads. I must have suspected the sexual signi-
ficance of the word from the facial expression of my worldly-wise teach-
er. My mother's features in the dream were copied from the countenance
of my grandfather, whom I had seen a few days before his death snoring
in the state of coma. The interpretation of the secondary elaboration in
the dream must therefore have been that my mother was dying; the

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tomb relief, too, agrees with this. In this anxiety I awoke, and could not
calm myself until I had awakened my parents. I remember that I sud-
denly became calm on coming face to face with my mother, as if I needed
the assurance that my mother was not dead. But this secondary inter-
pretation of the dream had been effected only under the influence of the
developed anxiety. I was not frightened because I dreamed that my
mother was dying, but I interpreted the dream in this manner in the fore-
conscious elaboration because I was already under the domination of the
anxiety. The latter, however, could be traced by means of the repression
to an obscure obviously sexual desire, which had found its satisfying ex-
pression in the visual content of the dream.
A man twenty-seven years old who had been severely ill for a year
had had many terrifying dreams between the ages of eleven and thirteen.
He thought that a man with an ax was running after him; he wished to
run, but felt paralyzed and could not move from the spot. This may be
taken as a good example of a very common, and apparently sexually in-
different, anxiety dream. In the analysis the dreamer first thought of a
story told him by his uncle, which chronologically was later than the
dream, viz. that he was attacked at night by a suspicious-looking indi-
vidual. This occurrence led him to believe that he himself might have
already heard of a similar episode at the time of the dream. In connection
with the ax he recalled that during that period of his life he once hurt his
hand with an ax while chopping wood. This immediately led to his rela-
tions with his younger brother, whom he used to maltreat and knock
down. In particular, he recalled an occasion when he struck his brother
on the head with his boot until he bled, whereupon his mother re-
marked: "I fear he will kill him some day." While he was seemingly
thinking of the subject of violence, a reminiscence from his ninth year
suddenly occurred to him. His parents came home late and went to bed
while he was feigning sleep. He soon heard panting and other noises
that appeared strange to him, and he could also make out the position of
his parents in bed. His further associations showed that he had estab-
lished an analogy between this relation between his parents and his own
relation toward his younger brother. He subsumed what occurred
between his parents under the conception "violence and wrestling," and
thus reached a sadistic conception of the coitus act, as often happens
among children. The fact that he often noticed blood on his mother's bed
corroborated his conception.
That the sexual intercourse of adults appears strange to children who
observe it, and arouses fear in them, I dare say is a fact of daily

95
experience. I have explained this fear by the fact that sexual excitement is
not mastered by their understanding, and is probably also inacceptable
to them because their parents are involved in it. For the same son this ex-
citement is converted into fear. At a still earlier period of life sexual emo-
tion directed toward the parent of opposite sex does not meet with re-
pression but finds free expression, as we have seen before.
For the night terrors with hallucinations (pavor nocturnus) frequently
found in children, I would unhesitatingly give the same explanation.
Here, too, we are certainly dealing with the incomprehensible and rejec-
ted sexual feelings, which, if noted, would probably show a temporal
periodicity, for an enhancement of the sexual libido may just as well be
produced accidentally through emotional impressions as through the
spontaneous and gradual processes of development.
I lack the necessary material to sustain these explanations from obser-
vation. On the other hand, the pediatrists seem to lack the point of view
which alone makes comprehensible the whole series of phenomena, on
the somatic as well as on the psychic side. To illustrate by a comical ex-
ample how one wearing the blinders of medical mythology may miss the
understanding of such cases I will relate a case which I found in a thesis
on pavor nocturnus by Debacker, 1881. A thirteen-year-old boy of delic-
ate health began to become anxious and dreamy; his sleep became rest-
less, and about once a week it was interrupted by an acute attack of anxi-
ety with hallucinations. The memory of these dreams was invariably
very distinct. Thus, he related that the devil shouted at him: "Now we
have you, now we have you," and this was followed by an odor of sul-
phur; the fire burned his skin. This dream aroused him, terror-stricken.
He was unable to scream at first; then his voice returned, and he was
heard to say distinctly: "No, no, not me; why, I have done nothing," or,
"Please don't, I shall never do it again." Occasionally, also, he said:
"Albert has not done that." Later he avoided undressing, because, as he
said, the fire attacked him only when he was undressed. From amid
these evil dreams, which menaced his health, he was sent into the coun-
try, where he recovered within a year and a half, but at the age of fifteen
he once confessed: "Je n'osais pas l'avouer, mais j'éprouvais continuelle-
ment des picotements et des surexcitations aux parties; à la fin, cela
m'énervait tant que plusieurs fois, j'ai pensé me jeter par la fenêtre au
dortoir."
It is certainly not difficult to suspect: 1, that the boy had practiced mas-
turbation in former years, that he probably denied it, and was threatened
with severe punishment for his wrongdoing (his confession: Je ne le ferai

96
plus; his denial: Albert n'a jamais fait ça). 2, That under the pressure of
puberty the temptation to self-abuse through the tickling of the genitals
was reawakened. 3, That now, however, a struggle of repression arose in
him, suppressing the libido and changing it into fear, which sub-
sequently took the form of the punishments with which he was then
threatened.
Let us, however, quote the conclusions drawn by our author. This ob-
servation shows: 1, That the influence of puberty may produce in a boy
of delicate health a condition of extreme weakness, and that it may lead
to a very marked cerebral anæmia.
2. This cerebral anæmia produces a transformation of character, de-
monomaniacal hallucinations, and very violent nocturnal, perhaps also
diurnal, states of anxiety.
3. Demonomania and the self-reproaches of the day can be traced to
the influences of religious education which the subject underwent 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 ter-
mination of the period of puberty.
5. A predisposing influence for the origin of the cerebral condition of
the boy may be attributed to heredity and to the father's chronic syphilit-
ic state.
The concluding remarks of the author read: "Nous avons fait entrer
cette observation dans le cadre des délires apyrétiques d'inanition, car
c'est à l'ischémie cérébrale que nous rattachons cet état particulier."

97
Chapter 8
The Primary and Secondary process - Regression
In venturing to attempt to penetrate more deeply into the psychology of
the dream processes, I have undertaken a difficult task, to which, indeed,
my power of description is hardly equal. To reproduce in description by
a succession of words the simultaneousness of so complex a chain of
events, and in doing so to appear unbiassed throughout the exposition,
goes fairly beyond my powers. I have now to atone for the fact that I
have been unable in my description of the dream psychology to follow
the historic development of my views. The view-points for my concep-
tion of the dream were reached through earlier investigations in the psy-
chology of the neuroses, to which I am not supposed to refer here, but to
which I am repeatedly forced to refer, whereas I should prefer to proceed
in the opposite direction, and, starting from the dream, to establish a
connection with the psychology of the neuroses. I am well aware of all
the inconveniences arising for the reader from this difficulty, but I know
of no way to avoid them.
As I am dissatisfied with this state of affairs, I am glad to dwell upon
another view-point which seems to raise the value of my efforts. As has
been shown in the introduction to the first chapter, I found myself con-
fronted with a theme which had been marked by the sharpest contradic-
tions on the part of the authorities. After our elaboration of the dream
problems we found room for most of these contradictions. We have been
forced, however, to take decided exception to two of the views pro-
nounced, viz. that the dream is a senseless and that it is a somatic pro-
cess; apart from these cases we have had to accept all the contradictory
views in one place or another of the complicated argument, and we have
been able to demonstrate that they had discovered something that was
correct. That the dream continues the impulses and interests of the wak-
ing state has been quite generally confirmed through the discovery of the
latent thoughts of the dream. These thoughts concern themselves only
with things that seem important and of momentous interest to us. The

98
dream never occupies itself with trifles. But we have also concurred with
the contrary view, viz., that the dream gathers up the indifferent rem-
nants from the day, and that not until it has in some measure withdrawn
itself from the waking activity can an important event of the day be
taken up by the dream. We found this holding true for the dream con-
tent, which gives the dream thought its changed expression by means of
disfigurement. We have said that from the nature of the association
mechanism the dream process more easily takes possession of recent or
indifferent material which has not yet been seized by the waking mental
activity; and by reason of the censor it transfers the psychic intensity
from the important but also disagreeable to the indifferent material. The
hypermnesia of the dream and the resort to infantile material have be-
come main supports in our theory. In our theory of the dream we have
attributed to the wish originating from the infantile the part of an indis-
pensable motor for the formation of the dream. We naturally could not
think of doubting the experimentally demonstrated significance of the
objective sensory stimuli during sleep; but we have brought this material
into the same relation to the dream-wish as the thought remnants from
the waking activity. There was no need of disputing the fact that the
dream interprets the objective sensory stimuli after the manner of an illu-
sion; but we have supplied the motive for this interpretation which has
been left undecided by the authorities. The interpretation follows in such
a manner that the perceived object is rendered harmless as a sleep dis-
turber and becomes available for the wish-fulfillment. Though we do not
admit as special sources of the dream the subjective state of excitement
of the sensory organs during sleep, which seems to have been demon-
strated by Trumbull Ladd, we are nevertheless able to explain this excite-
ment through the regressive revival of active memories behind the
dream. A modest part in our conception has also been assigned to the in-
ner organic sensations which are wont to be taken as the cardinal point
in the explanation of the dream. These—the sensation of falling, flying,
or inhibition—stand as an ever ready material to be used by the dream-
work to express the dream thought as often as need arises.
That the dream process is a rapid and momentary one seems to be true
for the perception through consciousness of the already prepared dream
content; the preceding parts of the dream process probably take a slow,
fluctuating course. We have solved the riddle of the superabundant
dream content compressed within the briefest moment by explaining
that this is due to the appropriation of almost fully formed structures
from the psychic life. That the dream is disfigured and distorted by

99
memory we found to be correct, but not troublesome, as this is only the
last manifest operation in the work of disfigurement which has been act-
ive from the beginning of the dream-work. In the bitter and seemingly ir-
reconcilable controversy as to whether the psychic life sleeps at night or
can make the same use of all its capabilities as during the day, we have
been able to agree with both sides, though not fully with either. We have
found proof that the dream thoughts represent a most complicated intel-
lectual activity, employing almost every means furnished by the psychic
apparatus; still it cannot be denied that these dream thoughts have ori-
ginated during the day, and it is indispensable to assume that there is a
sleeping state of the psychic life. Thus, even the theory of partial sleep
has come into play; but the characteristics of the sleeping state have been
found not in the dilapidation of the psychic connections but in the cessa-
tion of the psychic system dominating the day, arising from its desire to
sleep. The withdrawal from the outer world retains its significance also
for our conception; though not the only factor, it nevertheless helps the
regression to make possible the representation of the dream. That we
should reject the voluntary guidance of the presentation course is uncon-
testable; but the psychic life does not thereby become aimless, for we
have seen that after the abandonment of the desired end-presentation
undesired ones gain the mastery. The loose associative connection in the
dream we have not only recognized, but we have placed under its con-
trol a far greater territory than could have been supposed; we have,
however, found it merely the feigned substitute for another correct and
senseful one. To be sure we, too, have called the dream absurd; but we
have been able to learn from examples how wise the dream really is
when it simulates absurdity. We do not deny any of the functions that
have been attributed to the dream. That the dream relieves the mind like
a valve, and that, according to Robert's assertion, all kinds of harmful
material are rendered harmless through representation in the dream, not
only exactly coincides with our theory of the twofold wish-fulfillment in
the dream, but, in his own wording, becomes even more comprehensible
for us than for Robert himself. The free indulgence of the psychic in the
play of its faculties finds expression with us in the non-interference with
the dream on the part of the foreconscious activity. The "return to the
embryonal state of psychic life in the dream" and the observation of
Havelock Ellis, "an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect
thoughts," appear to us as happy anticipations of our deductions to the
effect that primitive modes of work suppressed during the day

100
participate in the formation of the dream; and with us, as with Delage,
the suppressed material becomes the mainspring of the dreaming.
We have fully recognized the rôle which Scherner ascribes to the
dream phantasy, and even his interpretation; but we have been obliged,
so to speak, to conduct them to another department in the problem. It is
not the dream that produces the phantasy but the unconscious phantasy
that takes the greatest part in the formation of the dream thoughts. We
are indebted to Scherner for his clew to the source of the dream
thoughts, but almost everything that he ascribes to the dream-work is at-
tributable to the activity of the unconscious, which is at work during the
day, and which supplies incitements not only for dreams but for neurotic
symptoms as well. We have had to separate the dream-work from this
activity as being something entirely different and far more restricted.
Finally, we have by no means abandoned the relation of the dream to
mental disturbances, but, on the contrary, we have given it a more solid
foundation on new ground.
Thus held together by the new material of our theory as by a superior
unity, we find the most varied and most contradictory conclusions of the
authorities fitting into our structure; some of them are differently dis-
posed, only a few of them are entirely rejected. But our own structure is
still unfinished. For, disregarding the many obscurities which we have
necessarily encountered in our advance into the darkness of psychology,
we are now apparently embarrassed by a new contradiction. On the one
hand, we have allowed the dream thoughts to proceed from perfectly
normal mental operations, while, on the other hand, we have found
among the dream thoughts a number of entirely abnormal mental pro-
cesses which extend likewise to the dream contents. These, consequently,
we have repeated in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have
termed the "dream-work" seems so remote from the psychic processes
recognized by us as correct, that the severest judgments of the authors as
to the low psychic activity of dreaming seem to us well founded.
Perhaps only through still further advance can enlightenment and im-
provement be brought about. I shall pick out one of the constellations
leading to the formation of dreams.
We have learned that the dream replaces a number of thoughts de-
rived from daily life which are perfectly formed logically. We cannot
therefore doubt that these thoughts originate from our normal mental
life. All the qualities which we esteem in our mental operations, and
which distinguish these as complicated activities of a high order, we find

101
repeated in the dream thoughts. There is, however, no need of assuming
that this mental work is performed during sleep, as this would materi-
ally impair the conception of the psychic state of sleep we have hitherto
adhered to. These thoughts may just as well have originated from the
day, and, unnoticed by our consciousness from their inception, they may
have continued to develop until they stood complete at the onset of
sleep. If we are to conclude anything from this state of affairs, it will at
most prove that the most complex mental operations are possible
without the coöperation of consciousness, which we have already
learned independently from every psychoanalysis of persons suffering
from hysteria or obsessions. These dream thoughts are in themselves
surely not incapable of consciousness; if they have not become conscious
to us during the day, this may have various reasons. The state of becom-
ing conscious depends on the exercise of a certain psychic function, viz.
attention, which seems to be extended only in a definite quantity, and
which may have been withdrawn from the stream of thought in Ques-
tion by other aims. Another way in which such mental streams are kept
from consciousness is the following:—Our conscious reflection teaches
us that when exercising attention we pursue a definite course. But if that
course leads us to an idea which does not hold its own with the critic, we
discontinue and cease to apply our attention. Now, apparently, the
stream of thought thus started and abandoned may spin on without re-
gaining attention unless it reaches a spot of especially marked intensity
which forces the return of attention. An initial rejection, perhaps con-
sciously brought about by the judgment on the ground of incorrectness
or unfitness for the actual purpose of the mental act, may therefore ac-
count for the fact that a mental process continues until the onset of sleep
unnoticed by consciousness.
Let us recapitulate by saying that we call such a stream of thought a
foreconscious one, that we believe it to be perfectly correct, and that it
may just as well be a more neglected one or an interrupted and sup-
pressed one. Let us also state frankly in what manner we conceive this
presentation course. We believe that a certain sum of excitement, which
we call occupation energy, is displaced from an end-presentation along
the association paths selected by that end-presentation. A "neglected"
stream of thought has received no such occupation, and from a
"suppressed" or "rejected" one this occupation has been withdrawn; both
have thus been left to their own emotions. The end-stream of thought
stocked with energy is under certain conditions able to draw to itself the
attention of consciousness, through which means it then receives a

102
"surplus of energy." We shall be obliged somewhat later to elucidate our
assumption concerning the nature and activity of consciousness.
A train of thought thus incited in the Forec. may either disappear
spontaneously or continue. The former issue we conceive as follows: It
diffuses its energy through all the association paths emanating from it,
and throws the entire chain of ideas into a state of excitement which,
after lasting for a while, subsides through the transformation of the ex-
citement requiring an outlet into dormant energy.23 If this first issue is
brought about the process has no further significance for the dream
formation. But other end-presentations are lurking in our foreconscious
that originate from the sources of our unconscious and from the ever act-
ive wishes. These may take possession of the excitations in the circle of
thought thus left to itself, establish a connection between it and the un-
conscious wish, and transfer to it the energy inherent in the unconscious
wish. Henceforth the neglected or suppressed train of thought is in a po-
sition to maintain itself, although this reinforcement does not help it to
gain access to consciousness. We may say that the hitherto foreconscious
train of thought has been drawn into the unconscious. Other constella-
tions for the dream formation would result if the foreconscious train of
thought had from the beginning been connected with the unconscious
wish, and for that reason met with rejection by the dominating end-occu-
pation; or if an unconscious wish were made active for other—possibly
somatic—reasons and of its own accord sought a transference to the
psychic remnants not occupied by the Forec. All three cases finally com-
bine in one issue, so that there is established in the foreconscious a
stream of thought which, having been abandoned by the foreconscious
occupation, receives occupation from the unconscious wish. The stream
of thought is henceforth subjected to a series of transformations which
we no longer recognize as normal psychic processes and which give us a
surprising result, viz. a psychopathological formation. Let us emphasize
and group the same. 1. The intensities of the individual ideas become
capable of discharge in their entirety, and, proceeding from one concep-
tion to the other, they thus form single presentations endowed with
marked intensity. Through the repeated recurrence of this process the in-
tensity of an entire train of ideas may ultimately be gathered in a single
presentation element. This is the principle of compression or condensa-
tion. It is condensation that is mainly responsible for the strange

[Link]. the significant observations by J. Bueuer in our Studies on Hysteria, 1895, and
2nd ed. 1909.

103
impression of the dream, for we know of nothing analogous to it in the
normal psychic life accessible to consciousness. We find here, also,
presentations which possess great psychic significance as junctions or as
end-results of whole chains of thought; but this validity does not mani-
fest itself in any character conspicuous enough for internal perception;
hence, what has been presented in it does not become in any way more
intensive. In the process of condensation the entire psychic connection
becomes transformed into the intensity of the presentation content. It is
the same as in a book where we space or print in heavy type any word
upon which particular stress is laid for the understanding of the text. In
speech the same word would be pronounced loudly and deliberately
and with emphasis. The first comparison leads us at once to an example
taken from the chapter on "The Dream-Work" (trimethylamine in the
dream of Irma's injection). Historians of art call our attention to the fact
that the most ancient historical sculptures follow a similar principle in
expressing the rank of the persons represented by the size of the statue.
The king is made two or three times as large as his retinue or the van-
quished enemy. A piece of art, however, from the Roman period makes
use of more subtle means to accomplish the same purpose. The figure of
the emperor is placed in the center in a firmly erect posture; special care
is bestowed on the proper modelling of his figure; his enemies are seen
cowering at his feet; but he is no longer represented a giant among
dwarfs. However, the bowing of the subordinate to his superior in our
own days is only an echo of that ancient principle of representation. The
direction taken by the condensations of the dream is prescribed on the
one hand by the true foreconscious relations of the dream thoughts, an
the other hand by the attraction of the visual reminiscences in the uncon-
scious. The success of the condensation work produces those intensities
which are required for penetration into the perception systems. 2.
Through this free transferability of the intensities, moreover, and in the
service of condensation, intermediary presentations—compromises, as it
were—are formed (cf. the numerous examples). This, likewise, is
something unheard of in the normal presentation course, where it is
above all a question of selection and retention of the "proper" presenta-
tion element. On the other hand, composite and compromise formations
occur with extraordinary frequency when we are trying to find the lin-
guistic expression for foreconscious thoughts; these are considered "slips
of the tongue." 3. The presentations which transfer their intensities to one
another are very loosely connected, and are joined together by such
forms of association as are spurned in our serious thought and are

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utilized in the production of the effect of wit only. Among these we par-
ticularly find associations of the sound and consonance types. 4. Contra-
dictory thoughts do not strive to eliminate one another, but remain side
by side. They often unite to produce condensation as if no contradiction
existed, or they form compromises for which we should never forgive
our thoughts, but which we frequently approve of in our actions. These
are some of the most conspicuous abnormal processes to which the
thoughts which have previously been rationally formed are subjected in
the course of the dream-work. As the main feature of these processes we
recognize the high importance attached to the fact of rendering the occu-
pation energy mobile and capable of discharge; the content and the actu-
al significance of the psychic elements, to which these energies adhere,
become a matter of secondary importance. One might possibly think that
the condensation and compromise formation is effected only in the ser-
vice of regression, when occasion arises for changing thoughts into pic-
tures. But the analysis and—still more distinctly—the synthesis of
dreams which lack regression toward pictures, e.g. the dream
"Autodidasker—Conversation with Court-Councilor N.," present the
same processes of displacement and condensation as the others. Hence
we cannot refuse to acknowledge that the two kinds of essentially differ-
ent psychic processes participate in the formation of the dream; one
forms perfectly correct dream thoughts which are equivalent to normal
thoughts, while the other treats these ideas in a highly surprising and in-
correct manner. The latter process we have already set apart as the
dream-work proper. What have we now to advance concerning this lat-
ter psychic process? We should be unable to answer this question here if
we had not penetrated considerably into the psychology of the neuroses
and especially of hysteria. From this we learn that the same incorrect
psychic processes—as well as others that have not been enumer-
ated—control the formation of hysterical symptoms. In hysteria, too, we
at once find a series of perfectly correct thoughts equivalent to our con-
scious thoughts, of whose existence, however, in this form we can learn
nothing and which we can only subsequently reconstruct. If they have
forced their way anywhere to our perception, we discover from the ana-
lysis of the symptom formed that these normal thoughts have been sub-
jected to abnormal treatment and have been transformed into the symp-
tom by means of condensation and compromise formation, through su-
perficial associations, under cover of contradictions, and eventually over
the road of regression. In view of the complete identity found between
the peculiarities of the dream-work and of the psychic activity forming

105
the psychoneurotic symptoms, we shall feel justified in transferring to
the dream the conclusions urged upon us by hysteria. From the theory of
hysteria we borrow the proposition that such an abnormal psychic elab-
oration 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. In accordance with this
proposition we have construed the theory of the dream on the assump-
tion that the actuating dream-wish invariably originates in the uncon-
scious, which, as we ourselves have admitted, cannot be universally
demonstrated though it cannot be refuted. But in order to explain the
real meaning of the term repression, which we have employed so freely,
we shall be obliged to make some further addition to our psychological
construction. We have above elaborated the fiction of a primitive psychic
apparatus, whose work is regulated by the efforts to avoid accumulation
of excitement and as far as possible to maintain itself free from excite-
ment. For this reason it was constructed after the plan of a reflex apparat-
us; the motility, originally the path for the inner bodily change, formed a
discharging path standing at its disposal. We subsequently discussed the
psychic results of a feeling of gratification, and we might at the same
time have introduced the second assumption, viz. that accumulation of
excitement—following certain modalities that do not concern us—is per-
ceived as pain and sets the apparatus in motion in order to reproduce a
feeling of gratification in which the diminution of the excitement is per-
ceived as pleasure. Such a current in the apparatus which emanates from
pain and strives 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 dis-
charge of excitement in the apparatus is regulated automatically by the
perception of pleasure and pain. The first wish must have been an hallu-
cinatory occupation of the memory for gratification. But this hallucina-
tion, unless it were maintained to the point of exhaustion, proved incap-
able of bringing about a cessation of the desire and consequently of se-
curing the pleasure connected with gratification. Thus there was re-
quired a second activity—in our terminology the activity of a second sys-
tem—which should not permit the memory occupation to advance to
perception and therefrom to restrict the psychic forces, but should lead
the excitement emanating from the craving stimulus by a devious path
over the spontaneous motility which ultimately should so change the
outer world as to allow the real perception of the object of gratification to
take place. Thus far we have elaborated the plan of the psychic apparat-
us; these two systems are the germ of the Unc. and Forec, which we

106
include in the fully developed apparatus. In order to be in a position suc-
cessfully to change the outer world through the motility, there is re-
quired the accumulation of a large sum of experiences in the memory
systems as well as a manifold fixation of the relations which are evoked
in this memory material by different end-presentations. We now proceed
further with our assumption. The manifold activity of the second system,
tentatively sending forth and retracting energy, must on the one hand
have full command over all memory material, but on the other hand it
would be a superfluous expenditure for it to send to the individual men-
tal paths large quantities of energy which would thus flow off to no pur-
pose, diminishing the quantity available for the transformation of the
outer world. In the interests of expediency I therefore postulate that the
second system succeeds in maintaining the greater part of the occupation
energy in a dormant state and in using but a small portion for the pur-
poses of displacement. The mechanism of these processes is entirely un-
known to me; any one who wishes to follow up these ideas must try to
find the physical analogies and prepare the way for a demonstration of
the process of motion in the stimulation of the neuron. I merely hold to
the idea that the activity of the first ?-system is directed to the free out-
flow of the quantities of excitement, and that the second system brings
about an inhibition of this outflow through the energies emanating from
it, i.e. it produces a transformation into dormant energy, probably by
raising the level. I therefore assume that under the control of the second
system as compared with the first, the course of the excitement is bound
to entirely different mechanical conditions. After the second system has
finished its tentative mental work, it removes the inhibition and conges-
tion of the excitements and allows these excitements to flow off to the
motility. An interesting train of thought now presents itself if we con-
sider the relations of this inhibition of discharge by the second system to
the regulation through the principle of pain. Let us now seek the coun-
terpart of the primary feeling of gratification, namely, the objective feel-
ing of fear. A perceptive stimulus acts on the primitive apparatus, be-
coming the source of a painful emotion. This will then be followed by ir-
regular motor manifestations until one of these withdraws the apparatus
from perception and at the same time from pain, but on the reappear-
ance of the perception this manifestation will immediately repeat itself
(perhaps as a movement of flight) until the perception has again disap-
peared. But there will here remain no tendency again to occupy the per-
ception of the source of pain in the form of an hallucination or in any
other form. On the contrary, there will be a tendency in the primary

107
apparatus to abandon the painful memory picture as soon as it is in any
way awakened, as the overflow of its excitement would surely produce
(more precisely, begin to produce) pain. The deviation from memory,
which is but a repetition of the former flight from perception, is facilit-
ated also by the fact that, unlike perception, memory does not possess
sufficient quality to excite consciousness and thereby to attract to itself
new energy. This easy and regularly occurring deviation of the psychic
process from the former painful memory presents to us the model and
the first example of psychic repression. As is generally known, much of
this deviation from the painful, much of the behavior of the ostrich, can
be readily demonstrated even in the normal psychic life of adults. By vir-
tue of the principle of pain the first system is therefore altogether incap-
able of introducing anything unpleasant into the mental associations.
The system cannot do anything but wish. If this remained so the mental
activity of the second system, which should have at its disposal all the
memories stored up by experiences, would be hindered. But two ways
are now opened: the work of the second system either frees itself com-
pletely from the principle of pain and continues its course, paying no
heed to the painful reminiscence, or it contrives to occupy the painful
memory in such a manner as to preclude the liberation of pain. We may
reject the first possibility, as the principle of pain also manifests itself as a
regulator for the emotional discharge of the second system; we are,
therefore, directed to the second possibility, namely, that this system oc-
cupies a reminiscence in such a manner as to inhibit its discharge and
hence, also, to inhibit the discharge comparable to a motor innervation
for the development of pain. Thus from two starting points we are led to
the hypothesis that occupation through the second system is at the same
time an inhibition for the emotional discharge, viz. from a consideration
of the principle of pain and from the principle of the smallest expendit-
ure of innervation. Let us, however, keep to the fact—this is the key to
the theory of repression—that the second system is capable of occupying
an idea only when it is in position to check the development of pain em-
anating from it. Whatever withdraws itself from this inhibition also re-
mains inaccessible for the second system and would soon be abandoned
by virtue of the principle of pain. The inhibition of pain, however, need
not be complete; it must be permitted to begin, as it indicates to the
second system the nature of the memory and possibly its defective ad-
aptation for the purpose sought by the mind. The psychic process which
is admitted by the first system only I shall now call the primary process;
and the one resulting from the inhibition of the second system I shall call

108
the secondary process. I show by another point for what purpose the
second system is obliged to correct the primary process. The primary
process strives for a discharge of the excitement in order to establish a
perception identity with the sum of excitement thus gathered; the sec-
ondary process has abandoned this intention and undertaken instead the
task of bringing about a thought identity. All thinking is only a circuit-
ous path from the memory of gratification taken as an end-presentation
to the identical occupation of the same memory, which is again to be at-
tained on the track of the motor experiences. The state of thinking must
take an interest in the connecting paths between the presentations
without allowing itself to be misled by their intensities. But it is obvious
that condensations and intermediate or compromise formations occur-
ring in the presentations impede the attainment of this end-identity; by
substituting one idea for the other they deviate from the path which oth-
erwise would have been continued from the original idea. Such pro-
cesses are therefore carefully avoided in the secondary thinking. Nor is it
difficult to understand that the principle of pain also impedes the pro-
gress of the mental stream in its pursuit of the thought identity, though,
indeed, it offers to the mental stream the most important points of depar-
ture. Hence the tendency of the thinking process must be to free itself
more and more from exclusive adjustment by the principle of pain, and
through the working of the mind to restrict the affective development to
that minimum which is necessary as a signal. This refinement of the
activity must have been attained through a recent over-occupation of en-
ergy brought about by consciousness. But we are aware that this refine-
ment is seldom completely successful even in the most normal psychic
life and that our thoughts ever remain accessible to falsification through
the interference of the principle of pain. This, however, is not the breach
in the functional efficiency of our psychic apparatus through which the
thoughts forming the material of the secondary mental work are enabled
to make their way into the primary psychic process—with which for-
mula we may now describe the work leading to the dream and to the
hysterical symptoms. This case of insufficiency results from the union of
the two factors from the history of our evolution; one of which belongs
solely to the psychic apparatus and has exerted a determining influence
on the relation of the two systems, while the other operates fluctuatingly
and introduces motive forces of organic origin into the psychic life. Both
originate in the infantile life and result from the transformation which
our psychic and somatic organism has undergone since the infantile peri-
od. When I termed one of the psychic processes in the psychic apparatus

109
the primary process, I did so not only in consideration of the order of
precedence and capability, but also as admitting the temporal relations
to a share in the nomenclature. As far as our knowledge goes there is no
psychic apparatus possessing only the primary process, and in so far it is
a theoretic fiction; but so much is based on fact that the primary pro-
cesses are present in the apparatus from the beginning, while the second-
ary processes develop gradually in the course of life, inhibiting and cov-
ering the primary ones, and gaining complete mastery over them per-
haps only at the height of life. Owing to this retarded appearance of the
secondary processes, the essence of our being, consisting in unconscious
wish feelings, can neither be seized nor inhibited by the foreconscious,
whose part is once for all restricted to the indication of the most suitable
paths for the wish feelings originating in the unconscious. These uncon-
scious wishes establish for all subsequent psychic efforts a compulsion to
which they have to submit and which they must strive if possible to di-
vert from its course and direct to higher aims. In consequence of this re-
tardation of the foreconscious occupation a large sphere of the memory
material remains inaccessible. Among these indestructible and unin-
cumbered wish feelings originating from the infantile life, there are also
some, the fulfillments of which have entered into a relation of contradic-
tion to the end-presentation of the secondary thinking. The fulfillment of
these wishes would no longer produce an affect of pleasure but one of
pain; and it is just this transformation of affect that constitutes the nature
of what we designate as "repression," in which we recognize the infantile
first step of passing adverse sentence or of rejecting through reason. To
investigate in what way and through what motive forces such a trans-
formation can be produced constitutes the problem of repression, which
we need here only skim over. It will suffice to remark that such a trans-
formation of affect occurs in the course of development (one may think
of the appearance in infantile life of disgust which was originally absent),
and that it is connected with the activity of the secondary system. The
memories from which the unconscious wish brings about the emotional
discharge have never been accessible to the Forec., and for that reason
their emotional discharge cannot be inhibited. It is just on account of this
affective development that these ideas are not even now accessible to the
foreconscious thoughts to which they have transferred their wishing
power. On the contrary, the principle of pain comes into play, and causes
the Forec. to deviate from these thoughts of transference. The latter, left
to themselves, are "repressed," and thus the existence of a store of infant-
ile memories, from the very beginning withdrawn from the Forec.,

110
becomes the preliminary condition of repression. In the most favorable
case the development of pain terminates as soon as the energy has been
withdrawn from the thoughts of transference in the Forec., and this effect
characterizes the intervention of the principle of pain as expedient. It is
different, however, if the repressed unconscious wish receives an organic
enforcement which it can lend to its thoughts of transference and
through which it can enable them to make an effort towards penetration
with their excitement, even after they have been abandoned by the occu-
pation of the Forec. A defensive struggle then ensues, inasmuch as the
Forec. reinforces the antagonism against the repressed ideas, and sub-
sequently this leads to a penetration by the thoughts of transference (the
carriers of the unconscious wish) in some form of compromise through
symptom formation. But from the moment that the suppressed thoughts
are powerfully occupied by the unconscious wish-feeling and aban-
doned by the foreconscious occupation, they succumb to the primary
psychic process and strive only for motor discharge; or, if the path be
free, for hallucinatory revival of the desired perception identity. We have
previously found, empirically, that the incorrect processes described are
enacted only with thoughts that exist in the repression. We now grasp
another part of the connection. These incorrect processes are those that
are primary in the psychic apparatus; they appear wherever thoughts
abandoned by the foreconscious occupation are left to themselves, and
can fill themselves with the uninhibited energy, striving for discharge
from the unconscious. We may add a few further observations to sup-
port the view that these processes designated "incorrect" are really not
falsifications of the normal defective thinking, but the modes of activity
of the psychic apparatus when freed from inhibition. Thus we see that
the transference of the foreconscious excitement to the motility takes
place according to the same processes, and that the connection of the
foreconscious presentations with words readily manifest the same dis-
placements and mixtures which are ascribed to inattention. Finally, I
should like to adduce proof that an increase of work necessarily results
from the inhibition of these primary courses from the fact that we gain a
comical effect, a surplus to be discharged through laughter, if we allow
these streams of thought to come to consciousness. The theory of the
psychoneuroses asserts with complete certainty that only sexual wish-
feelings from the infantile life experience repression (emotional trans-
formation) during the developmental period of childhood. These are
capable of returning to activity at a later period of development, and
then have the faculty of being revived, either as a consequence of the

111
sexual constitution, which is really formed from the original bisexuality,
or in consequence of unfavorable influences of the sexual life; and they
thus supply the motive power for all psychoneurotic symptom forma-
tions. It is only by the introduction of these sexual forces that the gaps
still demonstrable in the theory of repression can be filled. I will leave it
undecided whether the postulate of the sexual and infantile may also be
asserted for the theory of the dream; I leave this here unfinished because
I have already passed a step beyond the demonstrable in assuming that
the dream-wish invariably originates from the unconscious.24 Nor will I
further investigate the difference in the play of the psychic forces in the
dream formation and in the formation of the hysterical symptoms, for to
do this we ought to possess a more explicit knowledge of one of the
members to be compared. But I regard another point as important, and
will here confess that it was on account of this very point that I have just
undertaken this entire discussion concerning the two psychic systems,
their modes of operation, and the repression. For it is now immaterial
whether I have conceived the psychological relations in question with
approximate correctness, or, as is easily possible in such a difficult mat-
ter, in an erroneous and fragmentary manner. Whatever changes may be

[Link], as in other places, there are gaps in the treatment of the subject, which I have
left intentionally, because to fill them up would require on the one hand too great ef-
fort, and on the other hand an extensive reference to material that is foreign to the
dream. Thus I have avoided stating whether I connect with the word "suppressed"
another sense than with the word "repressed." It has been made clear only that the
latter emphasizes more than the former the relation to the unconscious. I have not
entered into the cognate problem why the dream thoughts also experience distortion
by the censor when they abandon the progressive continuation to consciousness and
choose the path of regression. I have been above all anxious to awaken an interest in
the problems to which the further analysis of the dreamwork leads and to indicate
the other themes which meet these on the way. It was not always easy to decide just
where the pursuit should be discontinued. That I have not treated exhaustively the
part played in the dream by the psychosexual life and have avoided the interpreta-
tion of dreams of an obvious sexual content is due to a special reason which may not
come up to the reader's expectation. To be sure, it is very far from my ideas and the
principles expressed by me in neuropathology to regard the sexual life as a
"pudendum" which should be left unconsidered by the physician and the scientific
investigator. I also consider ludicrous the moral indignation which prompted the
translator of Artemidoros of Daldis to keep from the reader's knowledge the chapter
on sexual dreams contained in the Symbolism of the Dreams. As for myself, I have
been actuated solely by the conviction that in the explanation of sexual dreams I
should be bound to entangle myself deeply in the still unexplained problems of per-
version and bisexuality; and for that reason I have reserved this material for another
connection.

112
made in the interpretation of the psychic censor and of the correct and of
the abnormal elaboration of the dream content, the fact nevertheless re-
mains that such processes are active in dream formation, and that essen-
tially they show the closest analogy to the processes observed in the
formation of the hysterical symptoms. The dream is not a pathological
phenomenon, and it does not leave behind an enfeeblement of the men-
tal faculties. The objection that no deduction can be drawn regarding the
dreams of healthy persons from my own dreams and from those of neur-
otic patients may be rejected without comment. Hence, when we draw
conclusions from the phenomena as to their motive forces, we recognize
that the psychic mechanism made use of by the neuroses is not created
by a morbid disturbance of the psychic life, but is found ready in the nor-
mal structure of the psychic apparatus. The two psychic systems, the
censor crossing between them, the inhibition and the covering of the one
activity by the other, the relations of both to consciousness—or whatever
may offer a more correct interpretation of the actual conditions in their
stead—all these belong to the normal structure of our psychic instru-
ment, and the dream points out for us one of the roads leading to a
knowledge of this structure. If, in addition to our knowledge, we wish to
be contented with a minimum perfectly established, we shall say that the
dream gives us proof that the suppressed, material continues to exist
even in the normal person and remains capable of psychic activity. The
dream itself is one of the manifestations of this suppressed material; the-
oretically, this is true in all cases; according to substantial experience it is
true in at least a great number of such as most conspicuously display the
prominent characteristics of dream life. The suppressed psychic material,
which in the waking state has been prevented from expression and cut
off from internal perception by the antagonistic adjustment of the contra-
dictions, finds ways and means of obtruding itself on consciousness dur-
ing the night under the domination of the compromise formations.
"Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo." At any rate the inter-
pretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious in
the psychic life. In following the analysis of the dream we have made
some progress toward an understanding of the composition of this most
marvelous and most mysterious of instruments; to be sure, we have not
gone very far, but enough of a beginning has been made to allow us to
advance from other so-called pathological formations further into the
analysis of the unconscious. Disease—at least that which is justly termed
functional—is not due to the destruction of this apparatus, and the estab-
lishment of new splittings in its interior; it is rather to be explained

113
dynamically through the strengthening and weakening of the compon-
ents in the play of forces by which so many activities are concealed dur-
ing the normal function. We have been able to show in another place
how the composition of the apparatus from the two systems permits a
subtilization even of the normal activity which would be impossible for a
single system.

114
Chapter 9
The Unconscious and Consciousness - Reality
On closer inspection we find that it is not the existence of two systems
near the motor end of the apparatus but of two kinds of processes or
modes of emotional discharge, the assumption of which was explained
in the psychological discussions of the previous chapter. This can make
no difference for us, for we must always be ready to drop our auxiliary
ideas whenever we deem ourselves in position to replace them by
something else approaching more closely to the unknown reality. Let us
now try to correct some views which might be erroneously formed 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 their traces in the terms "repression" and "penetration." Thus, when
we say that an unconscious idea strives for transference into the fore-
conscious in order later to penetrate consciousness, we do not mean that
a second idea is to be formed situated in a new locality like an interlin-
eation near which the original continues to remain; also, when we speak
of penetration into consciousness, we wish carefully to avoid any idea of
change of locality. When we say that a foreconscious idea is repressed
and subsequently taken up by the unconscious, we might be tempted by
these figures, borrowed from the idea of a struggle over a territory, to as-
sume that an arrangement is really broken up in one psychic locality and
replaced by a new one in the other locality. For these comparisons we
substitute what would seem to correspond better with the real state of af-
fairs by saying that an energy occupation is displaced to or withdrawn
from a certain arrangement so that the psychic formation falls under the
domination of a system or is withdrawn from the same. Here again we
replace a topical mode of presentation by a dynamic; it is not the psychic
formation that appears to us as the moving factor but the innervation of
the same.
I deem it appropriate and justifiable, however, to apply ourselves still
further to the illustrative conception of the two systems. We shall avoid

115
any misapplication of this manner of representation if we remember that
presentations, thoughts, and psychic formations should generally not be
localized in the organic elements of the nervous system, but, so to speak,
between them, where resistances and paths form the correlate corres-
ponding to them. Everything that can become an object of our internal
perception is virtual, like the image in the telescope produced by the pas-
sage of the rays of light. But we are justified in assuming the existence of
the systems, which have nothing psychic in themselves and which never
become accessible to our psychic perception, corresponding to the lenses
of the telescope which design the image. If we continue this comparison,
we may say that the censor between two systems corresponds to the re-
fraction of rays during their passage into a new medium.
Thus far we have made psychology on our own responsibility; it is
now time to examine the theoretical opinions governing present-day
psychology and to test their relation to our theories. The question of the
unconscious, in psychology is, according to the authoritative words of
Lipps, less a psychological question than the question of psychology. As
long as psychology settled this question with the verbal explanation that
the "psychic" is the "conscious" and that "unconscious psychic occur-
rences" are an obvious contradiction, a psychological estimate of the ob-
servations gained by the physician from abnormal mental states was pre-
cluded. The physician and the philosopher agree only when both ac-
knowledge that unconscious psychic processes are "the appropriate and
well-justified expression for an established fact." The physician cannot
but reject with a shrug of his shoulders the assertion that "consciousness
is the indispensable quality of the psychic"; he may assume, if his respect
for the utterings of the philosophers still be strong enough, that he and
they do not treat the same subject 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 unalterable convic-
tion that the most complicated and correct mental operations, to which
no one will refuse the name of psychic occurrences, may take place
without exciting the consciousness of the person. It is true that the physi-
cian does not learn of these unconscious processes until they have exer-
ted such an effect on consciousness as to admit communication or obser-
vation. But this effect of consciousness may show a psychic character
widely differing from the unconscious process, so that the internal per-
ception cannot possibly recognize the one as a substitute for the other.
The physician must reserve for himself the right to penetrate, by a pro-
cess of deduction, from the effect on consciousness to the unconscious

116
psychic process; he learns in this way that the effect on consciousness is
only a remote psychic product of the unconscious process and that the
latter has not become conscious as such; that it has been in existence and
operative without betraying itself in any way to consciousness.
A reaction from the over-estimation of the quality of consciousness be-
comes the indispensable preliminary condition for any correct insight in-
to the behavior of the psychic. In the words of Lipps, the unconscious
must be accepted as the general basis of the psychic life. The unconscious
is the larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle of the
conscious; everything conscious has its preliminary step in the uncon-
scious, whereas the unconscious may stop with this step and still claim
full value as a psychic activity. Properly speaking, the unconscious is the
real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the
external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the
data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of
our sensory organs.
A series of dream problems which have intensely occupied older au-
thors will be laid aside when the old opposition between conscious life
and dream life is abandoned and the unconscious psychic assigned to its
proper place. Thus many of the activities whose performances in the
dream have excited our admiration are now no longer to be attributed to
the dream but to unconscious thinking, which is also active during the
day. If, according to Scherner, the dream seems to play with a symboling
representation of the body, we know that this is the work of certain un-
conscious phantasies which have probably given in to sexual emotions,
and that these phantasies come to expression not only in dreams but also
in hysterical phobias and in other symptoms. If the dream continues and
settles activities of the day and even brings to light valuable inspirations,
we have only to subtract from it the dream disguise as a feat of dream-
work and a mark of assistance from obscure forces in the depth of the
mind (cf. the devil in Tartini's sonata dream). The intellectual task as
such must be attributed to the same psychic forces which perform all
such tasks during the day. We are probably far too much inclined to
over-estimate the conscious character even of intellectual and artistic
productions. From the communications of some of the most highly pro-
ductive persons, such as Goethe and Helmholtz, we learn, indeed, that
the most essential and original parts in their creations came to them in
the form of inspirations and reached their perceptions almost finished.
There is nothing strange about the assistance of the conscious activity in
other cases where there was a concerted effort of all the psychic forces.

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But it is a much abused privilege of the conscious activity that it is al-
lowed to hide from us all other activities wherever it participates.
It will hardly be worth while to take up the historical significance of
dreams as a special subject. Where, for instance, a chieftain has been
urged through a dream to engage in a bold undertaking the success of
which has had the effect of changing history, a new problem results only
so long as the dream, regarded as a strange power, is contrasted with
other more familiar psychic forces; the problem, however, disappears
when we regard the dream as a form of expression for feelings which are
burdened with resistance during the day and which can receive rein-
forcements at night from deep emotional sources. But the great respect
shown by the ancients for the dream is based on a correct psychological
surmise. It is a homage paid to the unsubdued and indestructible in the
human mind, and to the demoniacal which furnishes the dream-wish
and which we find again in our unconscious.
Not inadvisedly do I use the expression "in our unconscious," for what
we so designate does not coincide with the unconscious of the philo-
sophers, nor with the unconscious of Lipps. In the latter uses it is inten-
ded to designate only the opposite of conscious. That there are also un-
conscious psychic processes beside the conscious ones is the hotly con-
tested and energetically defended issue. Lipps gives us the more far-
reaching theory that everything psychic exists as unconscious, but that
some of it may exist also as conscious. But it was not to prove this theory
that we have adduced the phenomena of the dream and of the hysterical
symptom formation; the observation of normal life alone suffices to es-
tablish its correctness beyond any doubt. The new fact that we have
learned from the analysis of the psychopathological formations, and in-
deed from their first member, viz. dreams, is that the uncon-
scious—hence the psychic—occurs as a function of two separate systems
and that it occurs as such even in normal psychic life. Consequently
there are two kinds of unconscious, which we do not as yet find distin-
guished by the psychologists. Both are unconscious in the psychological
sense; but in our sense the first, which we call Unc., is likewise incapable
of consciousness, whereas the second we term "Forec." because its emo-
tions, after the observance of certain rules, can reach consciousness, per-
haps not before they have again undergone censorship, but still regard-
less of the Unc. system. The fact that in order to attain consciousness the
emotions must traverse an unalterable series of events or succession of
instances, as is betrayed through their alteration by the censor, has
helped us to draw a comparison from spatiality. We described the

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relations of the two systems to each other and to consciousness by saying
that the system Forec. is like a screen between the system Unc. and con-
sciousness. The system Forec. not only bars access to consciousness, but
also controls the entrance to voluntary motility and is capable of sending
out a sum of mobile energy, a portion of which is familiar to us as
attention.
We must also steer clear of the distinctions superconscious and sub-
conscious which have found so much favor in the more recent literature
on the psychoneuroses, for just such a distinction seems to emphasize
the equivalence of the psychic and the conscious.
What part now remains in our description of the once all-powerful
and all-overshadowing consciousness? None other than that of a sensory
organ for the perception of psychic qualities. According to the funda-
mental idea of schematic undertaking we can conceive the conscious per-
ception only as the particular activity of an independent system for
which the abbreviated designation "Cons." commends itself. This system
we conceive to be similar in its mechanical characteristics to the percep-
tion system P, hence excitable by qualities and incapable of retaining the
trace of changes, i.e. it is devoid of memory. The psychic apparatus
which, with the sensory organs of the P-system, is turned to the outer
world, is itself the outer world for the sensory organ of Cons.; the tele-
ological justification of which rests 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 under ex-
citement flows to the Cons, sensory organ from two sides, firstly from
the P-system whose excitement, qualitatively determined, probably ex-
periences a new elaboration until it comes to conscious perception; and,
secondly, from the interior of the apparatus itself, the quantitative pro-
cesses of which are perceived as a qualitative series of pleasure and pain
as soon as they have undergone certain changes.
The philosophers, who have learned that correct and highly complic-
ated thought structures are possible even without the coöperation of con-
sciousness, have found it difficult to attribute any function to conscious-
ness; it has appeared to them a superfluous mirroring of the perfected
psychic process. The analogy of our Cons. system with the systems of
perception relieves us of this embarrassment. We see that perception
through our sensory organs results in directing the occupation of atten-
tion to those paths on which the incoming sensory excitement is dif-
fused; the qualitative excitement of the P-system serves the mobile
quantity of the psychic apparatus as a regulator for its discharge. We

119
may claim the same function for the overlying sensory organ of the
Cons. system. By assuming new qualities, it furnishes a new contribution
toward the guidance and suitable distribution of the mobile occupation
quantities. By means of the perceptions of pleasure and pain, it influ-
ences the course of the occupations within the psychic apparatus, which
normally operates unconsciously and through the displacement of
quantities. It is probable that the principle of pain first regulates the dis-
placements of occupation automatically, but it is quite possible that the
consciousness of these qualities adds a second and more subtle regula-
tion which may even oppose the first and perfect the working capacity of
the apparatus by placing it in a position contrary to its original design for
occupying and developing even that which is connected with the libera-
tion of pain. We learn from neuropsychology that an important part in
the functional activity of the apparatus is attributed to such regulations
through the qualitative excitation of the sensory organs. The automatic
control of the primary principle of pain and the restriction of mental ca-
pacity connected with it are broken by the sensible regulations, which in
their turn are again automatisms. We learn that the repression which,
though originally expedient, terminates nevertheless in a harmful rejec-
tion of inhibition and of psychic domination, is so much more easily ac-
complished with reminiscences than with perceptions, because in the
former there is no increase in occupation through the excitement of the
psychic sensory organs. When an idea to be rejected has once failed to
become conscious because it has succumbed to repression, it can be
repressed on other occasions only because it has been withdrawn from
conscious perception on other grounds. These are hints employed by
therapy in order to bring about a retrogression of accomplished
repressions.
The value of the over-occupation which is produced by the regulating
influence of the Cons. sensory organ on the mobile quantity, is demon-
strated in the teleological connection by nothing more clearly than by the
creation of a new series of qualities and consequently a new regulation
which constitutes the precedence of man over the animals. For the men-
tal processes are in themselves devoid of quality except for the excite-
ments of pleasure and pain accompanying them, which, as we know, are
to be held in check as possible disturbances of thought. In order to en-
dow them with a quality, they are associated in man with verbal memor-
ies, the qualitative remnants of which suffice to draw upon them the at-
tention of consciousness which in turn endows thought with a new mo-
bile energy.

120
 The manifold problems of consciousness in their entirety can be ex-
amined only through an analysis of the hysterical mental process. From
this analysis we receive the impression that the transition from the fore-
conscious to the occupation of consciousness is also connected with a
censorship similar to the one between the Unc. and the Forec. This cen-
sorship, too, begins to act only with the reaching of a certain quantitative
degree, so that few intense thought formations escape it. Every possible
case of detention from consciousness, as well as of penetration to con-
sciousness, under restriction is found included within the picture of the
psychoneurotic phenomena; every case points to the intimate and two-
fold connection between the censor and consciousness. I shall conclude
these psychological discussions with the report of two such occurrences.
On the occasion of a consultation a few years ago the subject was an
intelligent and innocent-looking girl. Her attire was strange; whereas a
woman's garb is usually groomed to the last fold, she had one of her
stockings hanging down and two of her waist buttons opened. She com-
plained of pains in one of her legs, and exposed her leg unrequested. Her
chief complaint, however, was in her own words as follows: She had a
feeling in her body as if something was stuck into it which moved to and
fro and made her tremble through and through. This sometimes made
her whole body stiff. On hearing this, my colleague in consultation
looked at me; the complaint was quite plain to him. To both of us it
seemed peculiar that the patient's mother thought nothing of the matter;
of course she herself must have been repeatedly in the situation de-
scribed by her child. As for the girl, she had no idea of the import of her
words or she would never have allowed them to pass her lips. Here the
censor had been deceived so successfully that under the mask of an inno-
cent complaint a phantasy was admitted to consciousness which other-
wise would have remained in the foreconscious.
Another example: I began the psychoanalytic treatment of a boy of
fourteen years who was suffering from tic convulsif, hysterical vomiting,
headache, &c., by assuring him that, after closing his eyes, he would see
pictures or have ideas, which I requested him to communicate to me. He
answered by describing pictures. The last impression he had received be-
fore coming to me was visually revived in his memory. He had played a
game of checkers with his uncle, and now saw the checkerboard before
him. He commented on various positions that were favorable or unfa-
vorable, on moves that were not safe to make. He then saw a dagger ly-
ing on the checker-board, an object belonging to his father, but trans-
ferred to the checker-board by his phantasy. Then a sickle was lying on

121
the board; next a scythe was added; and, finally, he beheld the likeness
of an old peasant mowing the grass in front of the boy's distant parental
home. A few days later I discovered the meaning of this series of pic-
tures. Disagreeable family relations had made the boy nervous. It was
the case of a strict and crabbed father who lived unhappily with his
mother, and whose educational methods consisted in threats; of the sep-
aration of his father from his tender and delicate mother, and the re-
marrying of his father, who one day brought home a young woman as
his new mamma. The illness of the fourteen-year-old boy broke out a
few days later. It was the suppressed anger against his father that had
composed these pictures into intelligible allusions. The material was fur-
nished by a reminiscence from mythology, The sickle was the one with
which Zeus castrated his father; the scythe and the likeness of the peas-
ant represented Kronos, the violent old man who eats his children and
upon whom Zeus wreaks vengeance in so unfilial a manner. The mar-
riage of the father gave the boy an opportunity to return the reproaches
and threats of his father—which had previously been made because the
child played with his genitals (the checkerboard; the prohibitive moves;
the dagger with which a person may be killed). We have here long
repressed memories and their unconscious remnants which, under the
guise of senseless pictures have slipped into consciousness by devious
paths left open to them.
I should then expect to find the theoretical value of the study of
dreams in its contribution to psychological knowledge and in its prepar-
ation for an understanding of neuroses. Who can foresee the importance
of a thorough knowledge of the structure and activities of the psychic ap-
paratus when even our present state of knowledge produces a happy
therapeutic influence in the curable forms of the psychoneuroses? What
about the practical value of such study some one may ask, for psychic
knowledge and for the discovering of the secret peculiarities of individu-
al character? Have not the unconscious feelings revealed by the dream
the value of real forces in the psychic life? Should we take lightly the eth-
ical significance of the suppressed wishes which, as they now create
dreams, may some day create other things?
I do not feel justified in answering these questions. I have not thought
further upon this side of the dream problem. I believe, however, that at
all events the Roman Emperor was in the wrong who ordered one of his
subjects executed because the latter dreamt that he had killed the Emper-
or. He should first have endeavored to discover the significance of the
dream; most probably it was not what it seemed to be. And even if a

122
dream of different content had the significance of this offense against
majesty, it would still have been in place to remember the words of
Plato, that the virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which
the wicked man does in actual life. I am therefore of the opinion that it is
best to accord freedom to dreams. Whether any reality is to be attributed
to the unconscious wishes, and in what sense, I am not prepared to say
offhand. Reality must naturally be denied to all transition—and interme-
diate thoughts. If we had before us the unconscious wishes, brought to
their last and truest expression, we should still do well to remember that
more than one single form of existence must be ascribed to the psychic
reality. Action and the conscious expression of thought mostly suffice for
the practical need of judging a man's character. Action, above all, merits
to be placed in the first rank; for many of the impulses penetrating con-
sciousness are neutralized by real forces of the psychic life before they
are converted into action; indeed, the reason why they frequently do not
encounter any psychic obstacle on their way is because the unconscious
is certain of their meeting with resistances later. In any case it is instruct-
ive to become familiar with the much raked-up soil from which our vir-
tues proudly arise. For the complication of human character moving dy-
namically in all directions very rarely accommodates itself to adjustment
through a simple alternative, as our antiquated moral philosophy would
have it.
And how about the value of the dream for a knowledge of the future?
That, of course, we cannot consider. One feels inclined to substitute: "for
a knowledge of the past." For the dream originates from the past in every
sense. To be sure the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future is
not entirely devoid of truth. By representing to us a wish as fulfilled the
dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, taken by the
dreamer as present, has been formed into the likeness of that past by the
indestructible wish.

123
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