DREAM PSYCHOLOGY BY SIGMUND FREUD

DREAM PSYCHOLOGY BY SIGMUND FREUD

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DREAM PSYCHOLOGY
PSYCHOANALYSIS FOR BEGINNERS
BY
PROF. DR. SIGMUND FREUD

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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.

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The wealth of detail, the infinite care never to let anything pass
unexplained, with which he presented to the public the result of
his investigations, are impressing more and more serious-
minded scientists, but the examination of his evidential data
demands arduous work and presupposes 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 attempt an interpretation of their dreams or their
patients' dreams, deriding 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 psychoanalytic 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

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minds can thrive on such a diet. Self-deception is a plant which
withers fast in the pellucid atmosphere of dream investigation.
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
connection 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
statistician who does not know, and has no means of foreseeing,
what conclusions will be forced on him by the information he is
gathering, but who is fully prepared to accept those unavoidable
conclusions.

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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 acceptable molds for philosophic thinking.
The pragmatic view that "truth is what works" had not been as
yet expressed when Freud published his revolutionary views on
the psychology of dreams.
Five facts of first magnitude were made obvious to the world by
his interpretation of dreams.

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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 previous waking state. This positively establishes a
relation between sleeping 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 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 universality 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.

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Finally, Freud established a direct connection between dreams
and insanity, between the symbolic visions of our sleep and the
symbolic actions 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 Washington, 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 theory," nor Adler's theory of "organ inferiority
and compensation," nor Kempf's "dynamic mechanism" might
have been formulated.

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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 psychoanalysis, 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.
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.

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That point of view is not only revolutionising all the methods of
diagnosis 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 into 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.

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But the Freudian point of view, or more broadly speaking, the
psychoanalytic 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 convinced 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."
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.

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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 average 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 abstracted from that gigantic work the
parts which constitute the essential of his discoveries.

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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
psychology. With a simple, compact manual such as Dream
Psychology there shall be no longer any excuse for ignorance of
the most revolutionary psychological system of modern times.
ANDRE TRIDON.
121 Madison Avenue, New York.
November, 1920.
CONTENTSCHAPTER PAGE
I DREAMS HAVE A MEANING 1
II THE DREAM MECHANISM 24
III WHY THE DREAM DISGUISES THE DESIRES 57
IV DREAM ANALYSIS 78
V SEX IN DREAMS 104

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VI THE WISH IN DREAMS 135
VII THE FUNCTION OF THE DREAM 164
VIII THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY PROCESS—
REGRESSION 186
IX THE UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUSNESS—
REALITY 220
DREAM PSYCHOLOGY
I
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 manifestation of some higher powers,
demoniacal and Divine. With the rise of scientific thought the
whole of this expressive mythology was transferred to
psychology; to-day there is but a small minority among educated
persons who doubt that the dream is the dreamer's own
psychical act.

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But since the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an
interpretation of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of
its origin; its relationship 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 demanded 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-valuation. The foundation of dream life
is for them a peculiar state of psychical activity, which they even
celebrate as elevation to some higher state. Schubert, for
instance, claims: "The dream is the liberation of the spirit from

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the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from
the 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 outward 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 proceeding 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
running his fingers over the keys of an instrument. The dream is
to be regarded, says Binz, "as a physical process always useless,
frequently morbid." All the peculiarities of dream life are
explicable as the incoherent effort, due to some physiological
stimulus, of certain organs, or of the cortical elements of a brain
otherwise asleep.

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But slightly affected by scientific opinion and untroubled as to
the origin 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 replacing 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
grounded 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 acceptance
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 observers. It seemed, therefore, a priori, hopeful to
apply to the interpretation of dreams methods of investigation
which had been tested in psychopathological processes.
Obsessions and those peculiar sensations of haunting dread

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remain as strange to normal consciousness as do dreams to our
waking consciousness; their origin is as unknown to
consciousness 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 instruction and experience. Suppose the patient is
suffering from intense morbid dread. He is requested to direct
his attention to the idea in question, 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 impressions 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

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patient from imparting the ideas, which had indeed already
excluded them from consciousness. 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 adapted 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 resolution of every morbid idea if we
especially direct our attention to the unbidden associations
which disturb our thoughts—those which are otherwise put aside
by the critic as worthless refuse. If the procedure is exercised 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 examination of dreams. Any dream could be made use of in
this way. From certain motives I, however, choose a dream of
my own, which appears confused and meaningless to my
memory, and one which has the advantage of brevity. Probably

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my dream of last night satisfies the requirements. Its content,
fixed immediately after awakening, runs as follows:
"Company; at table or table d'hôte.... Spinach is served. Mrs.
E.L., sitting 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 appears 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.

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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 occupation; 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 avaricious 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 connection 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 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

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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 replaced 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 interests without any advantage to themselves, to ask the
innocent question satirically: "Do you think this will be done for
the sake of your beautiful 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;

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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
yesterday when my friend drove me home in his cab must have
made an impression 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 evening 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 recently occurred at our table. A child, whose
beautiful eyes are really deserving 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 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

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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
analysis 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 content, 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 together 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.

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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 suitable 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 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.

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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 associations of any dream are honestly followed
such a chain of thought is revealed, the constituent parts of the
dream reappear correctly and sensibly linked together; the slight
suspicion that this concatenation was merely an accident of a
single first observation must, therefore, be absolutely
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 analysis: 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 transformed 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 content is executed I name the dream-work. In contrast
with this is the work of analysis, which produces the reverse
transformation. The other problems of the dream—the inquiry as
to its stimuli, as to the source of its materials, as to its possible

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purpose, the function of dreaming, the forgetting 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 incorrect 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
deserves 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 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.

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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 confound them with the products of
our waking life.
A second group is formed by those dreams which are indeed
self-coherent 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 contemptuous 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

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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 prevented a
complete cognizance of the latent dream thought. On the
repetition 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 communication 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 meaning, and are not bizarre. This, by the way, is a further
objection to 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, essentially
simplified as they may be, should serve as an indispensable
preparation towards the psychology of the adult.

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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 eating, 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 during a walk in the Dachstein region. Whenever a new

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peak came into sight he asked if that were the Dachstein, and,
finally, refused to accompany 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.
What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They
completely satisfy 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 remained over night with a
childless aunt in a big—for her, naturally, huge—bed. The next

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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 reminded 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 regretted that he was not
living in those days.
From this short collection a further characteristic of the dreams
of children 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.

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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 striving 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 washing,
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 realization of
the desire somewhat indirectly; some connection, some sequel
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.

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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 meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the
infantile type, to the realization 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 expressing a desire. If the sea trip had
only lasted longer; if I were only washed and dressed; if I had

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only been allowed to keep the cherries instead 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
transformation 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.
II
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 commencement, 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 anything 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 connected with the

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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 compare 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 compression or
condensation. It is not at first easy to form an opinion as to the
extent 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 directions, 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 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

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separating), and The Flood, by an Italian master. 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
water 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 pressure 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 element 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

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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 approximate two dream thoughts, which have as
yet nothing in common, consists 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 process is analogous
to that of rhyme, when consonance supplies the desired common
factor. A good deal of the dream work consists in the creation of
those frequently very witty, but often exaggerated, digressions.
These vary from the common presentation in the dream content
to dream thoughts which are as varied as are the causes in form
and essence 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

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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 unhesitatingly 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 content 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 persons, 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 images in his
own dreams; manifold are their origins. I can build up a person
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

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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 analysis, and is only indicated in the dream
content by the formation of the "combined" person.
The same diversity in their ways of formation and the same rules
for its solution hold good also for the innumerable medley 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 exclusion 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
common. 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

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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 instead of remaining in Vienna. In
the dream I was traveling with my invention, 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 bedecked 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 content and dream thoughts. Just as
one element of the dream leads to associations with several
dream thoughts, so, as a rule, the one dream thought represents
more than one dream element. The threads of the association do

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not simply converge from the dream thoughts to the dream
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 consideration.
When I have arrived at an understanding of the dream thoughts
by my analysis I notice, above all, that the matter of the manifest
is very different from that of the latent dream content. That is, I
admit, 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.

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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 feelings, 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 irrecognizable. During this process,
which I will call the dream displacement, 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

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almost without any displacement. These have the same time,
meaning, and intelligibility as we found in the dreams which
recorded 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 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 conclusions 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,

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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 impressions 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 concerned with those
indifferent trifles of thought undeserving of our waking interest.
The depreciation of dreams is largely due to the predominance
of the indifferent and the worthless in their content.
Analysis destroys the appearance upon which this derogatory
judgment is based. When the dream content discloses nothing
but some indifferent impression 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
momentous in the psychical estimation of the individual. It is
only the action of displacement if what is indifferent obtains
recognition in the dream content instead of those impressions

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which are really the stimulus, or instead 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 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 trivialities 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 allusion 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 disbursed 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

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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 process in the formation of
dreams in which condensation and displacement work together
towards one end. In condensation we have already considered
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 displacement is added to condensation,
there is no formation of a mixed image, but a common mean
which bears the same relationship to the individual 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 injection with propyl. On first analysis I discovered an
indifferent but true incident 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

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idea between amyl and propylœa; it got into the dream as a kind
of compromise by simultaneous condensation and 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 readily understood act of the dream
work. The first dream thoughts which are unravelled by analysis
frequently strike one by their unusual wording. 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 understand the

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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 impressions, 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 content; it
works like a center of crystallization, by attracting and
rearranging the stuff of the dream thoughts. The scene of the
dream is not infrequently 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 instance 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.

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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 relationship
to each other; they form backgrounds and foregrounds,
stipulations, 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. 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 displacement,
creating at the same time fresh surfaces, to a selective
interweaving 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
restore the connection which the dream work has destroyed.
The dream's means of expression must therefore be regarded as
meager in comparison 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.

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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
approximation 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 together on a mountain peak, yet form ideally a
community. The dream continues 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
presentation, 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 connection. When

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"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 of movement checked serves the
purpose of representing disagreement of impulses—a conflict of
the will.
Only one of the logical relationships—that of similarity,
identity, agreement—is found highly developed 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 abundance 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

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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 content of the dream ideas.
Absurdity in the dream denotes disagreement, scorn, disdain in
the dream thoughts. As this explanation is in entire disagreement
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 violence. Mr. M____ has naturally been ruined
by this attack. He complains 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. Goethe 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 obscurity. The attack was, moreover, contained in
Goethe's well-known essay on 'Nature.'"

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The absurdity of the dream becomes the more glaring when I
state that Mr. M____ is a young business man without any
poetical 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

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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
patient 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

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dream thoughts run ironically. "Of course he is a madman, a
fool, and you are the genius who understands all about it. 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 absurd, 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 because 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 predominance 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
contempt.
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

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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
arrangement of the psychical matter, we must ascribe to it yet
another activity—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 preliminary explanation to be

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strengthened by interpolations and slight alterations. Such
elaboration of the dream content must not be too 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
perception that is to our liking. The dream content is thus
secured under the pretense of certain expectations, is
perceptually classified by the supposition 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 elaboration in every way analogous to the psychical action
of our waking life. In other dreams there is no such action; not

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even an attempt is made to bring about order and meaning. We
regard the dream as "quite mad," because 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
disconnected 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.
Beyond these four activities there is nothing else to be
discovered in the dream work. If we keep closely to the

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definition that dream work denotes the transference of dream
thoughts to dream content, we are compelled 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 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 conclusively every time that
these intellectual operations were already present in the dream
thoughts, and have only been taken over by the dream content.
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 transferred 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 together 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.

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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 greengrocer,
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 before I said myself to the patient that the earliest
reminiscences of childhood 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 rebuke
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

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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
unseemly 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 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 treatment by one year. The figures in
the dream become important if it be remembered 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

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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 origin 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

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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 therefore 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;
indeed, one a hundred times better if I had but waited. I could
have bought three such men with the money (dowry).
Footnote 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 Interpretation of Dreams," by
Artemidorus Daldianus). "Moreover, dreams are so intimately
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 languages."—TRANSLATOR.

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Footnote 2: It 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 Essays," p. 104; see also Freud, "Ueber
den Gegensinn der Urworte"; Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische
und Psychopathologische Forschungen, Band II., part i., p.
179).—TRANSLATOR.
III
WHY THE DREAM DISGUISES THE DESIRES
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

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processes to which must be referred the origin of hysterical
symptoms, the ideas of morbid dread, obsession, and illusion.
Condensation, and especially displacement, are never-failing
features in these other processes. The regard for appearance
remains, on the other hand, peculiar 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
illness is among the indispensable conditions. A whole number
of phenomena 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 experiences 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

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select another instead of that particular dream; in every dream
where the content is obscure or intricate, I should hit upon
dream thoughts which call for secrecy. If, however, I continue
the analysis for myself, without regard to those others, for
whom, indeed, so personal an event as my dream cannot 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 inexorably. 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
psychological 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 consciousness. 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
distortion 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 opposition in its real form? I remember that the free

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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 wishing 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 became 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
recognition of these repressed ideas is compulsory by reason of
their connection with the symptoms of his illness and of the
improvement resulting from exchanging the symptoms for the
repressed ideas. Take the patient from whom I got the last dream

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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
depreciation (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 husband, her symptoms
disappeared, and therewith disappeared her resistance 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 position to give a general exposition of the principal
results which the analysis of dreams supplies. We learnt that the
most intelligible and meaningful dreams are unrealized desires;
the desires they pictured as realized 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

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concealed realizations of repressed desires. It is interesting to
note that they are right who regard the dream as foretelling the
future. Although the future which the dream shows us is not that
which will occur, but that which we would like to occur. Folk
psychology proceeds here according to its wont; it believes what
it wishes to believe.
Dreams can be divided into three classes according to their
relation towards the 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 understanding. 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 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

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reckoned among dreams of dread; they have, however, always
been used to prove the unimportance and the psychical futility of
dreams. An analysis of such an example will show that it
belongs to our second class of dreams—a perfectly concealed
realization of repressed desires. Analysis will demonstrate at the
same time how excellently adapted is the work of displacement
to the concealment of desires.
A girl dreamt that she saw lying dead before her the only
surviving child of her sister amid the same surroundings as a
few years before she saw the first child lying dead. She was not
sensible of any pain, but naturally 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 behavior in the
dream is adapted, not to the displaced, but to the real but

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suppressed 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
themselves 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 psychical
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 itself, 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, according to our definition, in a state of
repression. Under certain conditions, 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
negligence 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

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alterations must be conceded so as to placate it. It is a
compromise which becomes conscious in this case—a
compromise 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 dependent 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 ventured 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 correlate that the second procedure
commands the entrance to consciousness, and can exclude the
first from consciousness.

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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 happens that
some fragment of the dream is suddenly forgotten. This
fragment so forgotten invariably contains the best and readiest
approach to an understanding of the dream. Probably that is why
it sinks into oblivion—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 disturbed 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.
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 other objects to the psychical
apparatus. The means which serve to keep external stimuli
distant are known; but what are the means we can employ to

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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,
instead of bellowing, would have dreamt that he was playing
with the rhinoceros. Because the dream which realizes his desire
is believed during sleep, it removes the desire and makes sleep
possible. It cannot be denied that this belief accords with the
dream image, because it is arrayed 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 aspirations, 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

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differentiation of the psychical matter has been fashioned which
the child knew not. A psychical procedure has been reached
which, informed by the experience of life, exercises with jealous
power a dominating and restraining 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
withheld 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-physiological 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 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

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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, saying, 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 greater 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 disturbances so as

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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 experimentally 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
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 instance,
he can stay the stimulus by dreaming of a scene which is
absolutely intolerable to him. This was the means used by one
who was troubled by a painful perineal abscess. He dreamt that
he was on horseback, 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 rendering, which leads

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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 carpet 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 explanation, 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 analysis to erotic desires. This assertion is
not drawn from dreams obviously of a sexual nature, which are
known to all dreamers from their own experience, 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,

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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 surplus from the day only, reaches presentation in dreams
with the help of repressed erotic desires.
Towards the explanation of this statement, which is no
theoretical postulate, it must be remembered that no other class
of instincts has required so vast a suppression at the behest of
civilization as the sexual, whilst their mastery by the highest
psychical processes are in most persons soonest of all
relinquished. Since we have learnt to understand infantile
sexuality, often so vague in its expression, so invariably
overlooked 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.1
If the dream, which is the expression of some erotic desire,
succeeds 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 presentation, those used in

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dreams must be deprived of direct understanding. The means of
presentation which answer these requirements are commonly
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 themselves 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
symbolism 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 removed 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 woman2, and so on. The sexes are represented
by a great variety of symbols, many of which would be at first

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quite incomprehensible had not the clews to the 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
instance, 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 symbols 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 impressions about the dream, and would give us
back the whole technique of ancient dream interpreters. Apart
from individual symbols and the variations 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

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content of the dream is certainly not to be interpreted
symbolically. The knowledge of dream symbols will only help
us in understanding 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 acknowledge that symbolism is not a result of the
dream work, but is a peculiarity probably of our unconscious
thinking, which furnishes to the dream work the matter for
condensation, displacement, and dramatization.
Footnote 1: Freud, "Three Contributions to Sexual Theory,"
translated by A.A. Brill (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Publishing Company, New York).

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Footnote 2: The 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
opinion.—TRANSLATOR.
IV
DREAM ANALYSIS
Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation
is capable 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
fulfillment of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case
dream-disfigurement 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

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we limit ourselves to a consideration of what the second instance
contributes to the dream, we can never understand the dream. If
we do so, all the riddles which the authors 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 contents and attempt an analysis of them.
They are partly dreams of hysterical subjects, which require long
preliminary statements, and now and then also an examination
of the psychic processes which occur in hysteria. 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 expect from my
colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all dreams are the
fulfillments of wishes is raised by my patients with perfect
regularity. Here are several examples of the dream material
which is offered me to refute this position.

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"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 reconcile 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 coherent, and looks like the opposite of a
wish-fulfillment. "But what occurrence has given rise to this
dream?" I ask. "You know that the stimulus 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

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invitations to suppers. She proceeds laughingly to relate how her
husband at an inn table had made the acquaintance of an artist,
who insisted 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 face1. 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 habit of hiding behind such unsatisfactory
explanations. We are reminded of subjects hypnotized by
Bernheim, who carried out a posthypnotic order, and who, upon
being asked for their motives, instead of answering: "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

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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 accomplished. 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 resistance, 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

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for the sake of getting thin teaches you that one grows fat on the
things served in company." Now only some conversation 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 circumstance. 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 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.

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I think she has actually done this, and as a sign of this
identification she has created an unfulfilled wish in reality. But
what is the meaning of this hysterical 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 represent 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 personalities alone. It will here be
objected that this is well-known hysterical imitation, the ability
of hysteric subjects to copy all the symptoms which impress
them when they occur in others, as though their pity were
stimulated 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 imitation of hysterical
subjects to be: it corresponds to an unconscious concluded
process, as an example will show. The physician who has a
female 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 imitations. He simply says to
himself: The others have seen her and have done likewise: that

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is psychic infection. Yes, but psychic infection proceeds 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 becoming 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 therefore not a simple
imitation, but a sympathy based upon the same etiological claim;
it expresses an "as though," and refers to some common quality
which has remained in the unconscious.
Identification is most often 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

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the identification if one thinks of sexual relations, whether or not
they become real. The patient, then, only follows the rules of the
hysterical thought processes when she gives expression 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 clarify 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 husband2.
The contradiction to my theory of dreams in the case of another
female patient, the most witty among all my dreamers, 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

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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 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 transformed into the dream, thus
corresponded to the justifiable wish that those things, which at
the time had only been suspected, had never occurred at all.
Without an analysis, and merely by means of an assumption, 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 Gymnasium. 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

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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 interpretation was impossible. After some
reflection I was able to give her the interpretation of the dream,
which I subsequently made her confirm.

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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 relations were to end in
marriage, but this happy culmination was frustrated by the sister,
whose motives have never found a complete explanation. After
the break, the man who was loved by our patient avoided the
house: she herself became independent some time after little
Otto's 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
opportunity 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 easily 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

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the coffin of little Otto." It was exactly as I had expected. I
interpreted the dream in the following 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 anticipated 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

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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.3 In
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 relationship 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
therefore 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
following 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, therefore, really the fulfillment of a wish, but a
wish which had been put aside for fifteen years, and it is not

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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 following 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
informant 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 arrested?" "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."4 "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 of the dream." "Well, then, I

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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 betray 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 inconsistency of permitting
the practice of coitus as long as no impregnation 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 prevention 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-

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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
mentioned you should be left in an uncomfortable mood, which
now becomes an element in the composition of your dream. You
also make use of this unpleasant state of mind to conceal the
wish-fulfillment. Furthermore, the mention of infanticide has not
yet been explained. Why does 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 discovered." "I understand; this recollection
furnished a second reason why the supposition that you had
done your trick badly must have been painful to you."
A young physician, who had heard this dream of my colleague
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

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to another subject. The day before he had handed in a
declaration of his income, which was perfectly honest, because
he had little to declare. He dreamt that an acquaintance of his
came from a meeting of the tax commission 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 inspiring these dreams is the

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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
certainty upon causing such a dream after I have once explained
to the patient my theory that the dream is a wish-fulfillment.5 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 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
necessary, 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
purpose in life and the motive for her being ill.

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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
conversion 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 chastisement 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
inclinations. Here is such a dream. A young man, who has in
earlier years tormented his elder brother, towards whom he was
homosexually inclined, but who had undergone a complete
change of character, has the following dream, which consists of
three parts: (1) He is "insulted" by his brother. (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.

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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 content 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 disagreeable
sensation which such dreams arouse is simply identical with the
antipathy which endeavors—usually with success—to restrain
us from the treatment or discussion of such subjects, and which
must be overcome 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
connecting 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 impossible 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.

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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 extent so much greater than is warranted by its
origin. The same explanation, then, which applies to the phobia
applies also to the dream of anxiety. 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 Neurosis,"6 I maintained that
neurotic fear has its origin in the sexual life, and corresponds to

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a libido which has been turned away from its object and has not
succeeded in being applied. From this formula, which has since
proved its validity more and more clearly, we may deduce the
conclusion that the content of anxiety dreams is of a sexual
nature, the libido belonging to which content has been
transformed into fear.
Footnote 1: To sit for the painter. Goethe: "And if he has no
backside, how can the nobleman sit?"
Footnote 2: 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.
Footnote 3: Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of
the deferred supper.
Footnote 4: It often happens that a dream is told incompletely,
and that a recollection of the omitted portions appear only in the

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course of the analysis. These portions subsequently fitted in,
regularly furnish the key to the interpretation. Cf. below, about
forgetting in dreams.
Footnote 5: Similar "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."
Footnote 6: See Selected Papers on Hysteria and other
Psychoneuroses, p. 133, translated by A.A. Brill, Journal of
Nervous and Mental Diseases, Monograph Series.
V
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).

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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 explanation. No other impulse has had to
undergo so much suppression from the time of childhood as the
sex impulse in its numerous components, from no other impulse
have survived so many and such intense unconscious 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 exaggerated 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 irrefutable secondary interpretation in which they realize
homosexual feelings—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

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proceed far beyond what is admissible in the interpretation of
dreams.
We have already asserted elsewhere that dreams which are
conspicuously 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 unmistakably 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 into 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 narrow slanting
passage is of course the vagina; the assistance attributed to the

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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 altogether 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 answer: "I cannot remember such a dream." Immediately
afterwards, however, there arises the recollection of another
disguised and indifferent 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 intercourse 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

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the mother; it can indeed be asserted with such certainty of no
other locality that one "has been there before."
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.

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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
accomplished 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 recognized 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
recognizes 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 invitation 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 become a
mother herself.1
Another dream of parturition, with its interpretation, I take from
the work of E. Jones. "She stood at the seashore 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

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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 conversation 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 indicated 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 mythology,
the delivery of a child from the uterine waters is commonly
presented by distortion as the entry of the child into water;
among many others, the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and
Bacchus are well-known illustrations 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

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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.
Another 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, amniotic liquor). She lifts up a trap
in the floor, and there immediately appears 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, burglars 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 lifted the
cover in order to see clearly how the child is holding its hands

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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 familiar 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 belong peculiarly to the dream, but rather to
unconscious thinking, particularly 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 regularly, mean the same thing. Only
it is necessary to keep in mind the curious plasticity of psychic
material. Now and then a symbol in the dream content may have

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to be interpreted not symbolically, but according to its real
meaning; at another time the dreamer, owing to a peculiar set of
recollections, 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 account 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 upon which one is letting oneself
down, frequently under great anxiety, correspond to the erect

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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 complex 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 characteristic 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 significance. 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

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"little one." As a very recent symbol of the male genital may be
mentioned 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 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 symbol which (if in any way permitted by
the phantasy) may not be used simultaneously in the masculine

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and the feminine sense!" To be sure the clause in parentheses
takes away much of the absoluteness of this assertion, 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
statement 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 exclusively, 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 objects and
weapons as symbols of the female genitals, or hollow objects
(chests, pouches, &c.), as symbols of the male genitals, is indeed
not allowed by the fancy.
It is true that the tendency of the dream and the unconscious
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 suggestions 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

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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 temptation).
"I am walking in the street in summer, I wear a straw hat of
peculiar 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 myself: 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 concerning the unequal
downward hanging of the two side pieces, although just such
individualities in the determinations lead the way to the
interpretation. I continued by saying that if she only had a man
with such a virile genital she would not have to fear the

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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 explanation 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
downwards. 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).

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"Her mother sends away her little daughter so that she must go
alone. She rides with her mother to the railroad 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 behind. 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 interpretation 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 historically as an allusion to a departure from a
sanatorium for nervous diseases, with the superintendent of
which she naturally was in love. Her mother took her away from
this place, and the physician came to the railroad station and
handed her a bouquet of flowers on leaving; she felt
uncomfortable because her mother witnessed this homage. Here
the mother, 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 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

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behind; 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 introductory
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
signifies 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 interpretation 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

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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 according 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 intercourse 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 complex.)

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"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, 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 offering any resistances whatever up to a
certain point, but from that point on they remain almost
inaccessible. This dream he almost analyzed himself. "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 structure is the scrotum. In the dream
his father asks him what this is all for—that is, he asks him

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about the purpose and arrangement of the genitals. 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 instance, but originates from
his father's place of business. For discretionary reasons I have
inserted the tin for another material in which the father 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 commercial dishonesty,
the dreamer himself gives a second explanation—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 entirely 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 shaft he at once interprets as the vagina

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by referring to the soft upholstering 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
instances2.
The details that at the end of the first shaft there is a longer
platform and then a new shaft, he himself explains
biographically. 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 dishonest
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.)

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... Then some one broke into the house and anxiously called for
a policeman. But he went with two tramps by mutual consent
into a church,3 to which led a great many stairs;4 behind the
church there was a mountain,5 on top of which a dense forest.6
The policeman was furnished with a helmet, a gorget, and a
cloak.7 The two vagrants, who went along with the policeman
quite peaceably, had tied to their loins sack-like aprons.8 A road
led from the church to the mountain. This road was overgrown
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 indebted 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.

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(A grown-up woman?) 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 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 surname 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 obtained. 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 dampness
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.

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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 parents, where there was no
opportunity for sexual relations, and that the excited man
performed the act on the stairs. In witty allusion to the
mischievous 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 reproduced 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 childhood, and in which he had first become acquainted with
sexual problems. In this house he used, among other things, to
slide down the banister 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
infantile experience, the beginning of the dream seems to
represent the factor of sexual excitement. In the same house and
in the adjacent residence the dreamer used to play pugnacious

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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 symbolism9
that in the dream stairs or climbing stairs almost regularly
symbolizes coitus, the 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 became 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
pursuing and overcoming of the child. The libidinous excitement
becomes enhanced 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 stairway). Up to this point the dream would be
one of pure, sexual symbolism, and obscure for the unpracticed
dream interpreter. But this symbolic 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 stairway 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.

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Still another remark concerning the two pictures, which, aside
from their real significance, 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 obtained 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
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him than enforced abstinence. This influence provoked the
following dream:
"His piano teacher reproaches 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 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 reaction, in
which magnesium is to be dissolved in absolutely pure ether
under 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.

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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
partially 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 clearness. 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

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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 anything 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
synthesis; the He in the dream, however, who accomplishes the
operation, is myself. How unpleasant he must seem to me with
his indifference towards 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 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 mentioned 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

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with his usual sexual objects (that is, with masturbation)
corresponds with his resistance.
Footnote 1: It is only of late that I have learned to value the
significance of fancies and unconscious 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 unconscious reason for the belief in a life after
death which represents nothing but a projection 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.
Footnote 2: Cf. Zentralblatt für psychoanalyse, I.
Footnote 3: Or chapel—vagina.
Footnote 4: Symbol of coitus.
Footnote 5: Mons veneris.
Footnote 6: Crines pubis.

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Footnote 7: Demons in cloaks and capucines are, according to
the explanation of a man versed in the subject, of a phallic
nature.
Footnote 8: The two halves of the scrotum.
Footnote 9: See Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, vol. i., p. 2.
VI
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 definition 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,

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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
conclusion 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 into the part played by the wish-fulfillment in the dream,
and into the significance 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 recognized, and was frequently
concealed by every available means. In this latter class of

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dreams we recognized the influence of the dream censor. The
undisguised wish dreams were chiefly found in children, yet
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
external 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 suppressed wish. Or, thirdly,
it may have no relation to daily life, and belong to those wishes
that originate during the night from the suppression. If we now
follow our scheme of the psychic apparatus, we can localize 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 into 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

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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
answering 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 engaged 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 following
night she dreams that the same question is put to her, and that
she replies with the formula: "In case of subsequent orders it
will suffice to mention the 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 perception in the
waking state. Thus it would appear that all wishes are of the
same value and force for the dream formation.

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I am at present unable to prove that the state of affairs is really
different, 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 forget that it is, after all, the wish of
a child, that it is a wish-feeling of infantile 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 individual 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 incitement of dreams, but that is probably
all. The dream would not originate 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

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unconscious wish which reinforces it. Following the suggestions
obtained through the psychoanalysis of the neuroses, I believe
that these unconscious wishes are always active and ready for
expression whenever they find an opportunity to unite
themselves with an emotion from conscious life, and that they
transfer their greater intensity to the lesser intensity of the
latter.1 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 active and, as it were,
immortal wishes from the unconscious recall the legendary
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 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 psychological 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
originates 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

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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, therefore, 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 impressions continue
the thinking activity even during sleep, maintaining psychic
processes in the system which we have termed the
foreconscious. 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 unfinished 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,

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we may add group (5) consisting of the indifferent and hence
unsettled impressions of the day.
We should not underrate the psychic intensities introduced into
sleep by these remnants of waking life, especially those
emanating from the group of the unsolved. These excitations
surely continue to strive for expression during the night, and we
may assume with equal certainty that the sleeping state renders
impossible the usual continuation of the excitement in the
foreconscious and the termination of the excitement by its
becoming conscious. As far as we can normally 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
produced 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 conditions 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 relation of the
foreconscious day remnants to the dream? There is no doubt that

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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-fulfillment to see what
conditions they must comply with in order to be received 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 referring 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 identify myself with Professor R., as it

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meant the realization of one of the immortal infantile wishes,
viz. that of becoming great. Repulsive ideas respecting my
friend, that would certainly have been repudiated in a waking
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 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 desire 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 procure for itself such wish as a motive

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power of the dream. To speak figuratively, it is quite possible
that a day thought plays the part of the contractor (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 depend upon a capitalist to defray the necessary expenses,
and this capitalist, 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
creates the dream. The dream processes, moreover, run parallel
with all the other possibilities of the economic relationship used
here as an illustration. Thus, the entrepreneur may contribute
some capital himself, or several entrepreneurs may seek the aid
of the same capitalist, or several capitalists 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
further interest to us. What we have left unfinished in this
discussion of the dream-wish we shall be able to develop later.

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The "tertium comparationis" in the comparisons just
employed—i.e. the sum placed at our free disposal in proper
allotment—admits of still finer application for the illustration 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 displacements of the dream-work by a process of
retrogression, we find that the psychic intensity of the elements
in the dream thoughts is replaced 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-fulfillment 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 separate 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
significance 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 ingredient in the formation of the

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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 mixture. 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 altogether incapable of
entering into the foreconscious, and that it can exert an influence
there only by uniting with a harmless idea already belonging 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 fondness for comparisons from daily life, but I feel tempted
to say that the relations existing for the repressed idea are
similar to the situations existing in Austria for the American
dentist, who is forbidden to practise unless 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

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with dental practitioners, so in the psychic life only such
foreconscious or conscious ideas are chosen to cover a repressed
idea as have not themselves 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 attention 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 develop 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

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elements, 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 indifferent ones because they
have offered no inducement for extensive associations, 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
unconscious 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 disturbers of sleep, and not the
dream, which, on the contrary, strives to guard sleep. But we
shall return to this point later.

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We have so far discussed 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 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 unsolved problem possess an example, the
analysis of which might reveal the infantile or repressed wish
source furnishing such alliance and successful strengthening of
the efforts of the foreconscious activity. But we have not come
one step nearer a solution of the riddle: Why can the
unconscious 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
assumptions, to be confirmed elsewhere, we know that at first
the apparatus strove to keep as free from excitement as possible,
and in its first formation, therefore, the scheme took the form of
a reflex apparatus, which enabled it promptly to discharge

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through the motor tracts any sensible stimulus reaching it from
without. But this simple function was disturbed 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 designated as "inner changes" or as an
"expression of the emotions." The hungry child cries or fidgets
helplessly, but its situation remains unchanged; 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
experienced—which in the case of the child must be through
outside help—in order to remove the inner excitement. An
essential constituent of this experience is the appearance of a
certain perception (of food in our example), 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 reappearance of the perception constitutes the wish-
fulfillment, and the full revival of the perception by the want

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excitement constitutes the shortest road to the wish-fulfillment.
We may assume a primitive condition of the psychic apparatus
in which this road is really followed, i.e. where the wishing
merges into an hallucination, This first psychic activity 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
practical experience into a more expedient secondary activity.
The establishment of the identity perception on the short
regressive road within the apparatus does not in another respect
carry with it the result which inevitably follows the revival of
the same perception from without. The gratification does not
take place, and the want continues. In order to equalize the
internal with the external sum of energy, the former must be
continually 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 dominates the voluntary motility, i.e.

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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 picture to the establishment of the perception identity
from the outer world merely represents a detour which has been
forced upon the wish-fulfillment by experience.2 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 apparatus
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 inexpedient. 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 discarded primitive weapons of
grown-up humanity. The dream is a fragment of the abandoned
psychic life of the child. In the psychoses these modes of
operation of the psychic apparatus, which are normally
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 endeavor to penetrate to
consciousness and dominate motility by the road leading

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through the system of the foreconscious. It is, therefore, the
censor 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 making possible the
hallucinatory regression? I think not, for when the critical
guardian goes to rest—and we have proof that his slumber is not
profound—he takes care to close the gate to motility. No matter
what feelings 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
diminution in the operation of the critical censor, but through
pathological enfeeblement of the latter or through pathological
reinforcement of the unconscious excitations, and this while the
foreconscious is charged with energy and the avenues to motility
are open. The guardian is then overpowered, the unconscious
excitations subdue the Forec.; through it they dominate our
speech and actions, or they enforce the hallucinatory regression,
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.

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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
because 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 disposal but wish-feelings. If we avail ourselves for
a moment longer of the right to elaborate from the dream
interpretation such far-reaching psychological speculations, we
are in duty bound to demonstrate that we are thereby bringing
the dream into a relationship which may also comprise other
psychic structures. If there exists a system of the Unc.—or
something sufficiently analogous to it for the purpose of our
discussion—the dream cannot be its sole manifestation; every
dream may be a wish-fulfillment, but there must be other forms
of abnormal wish-fulfillment 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

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symptoms, evince one essential quality which I have so far
failed to find in the dream. Thus, from the investigations
frequently referred to in this treatise, I know that the formation
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 conflicting systems. Just as
in the dream, there is no limit to further over-determination. The
determination not derived from the Unc. is, as far as I can see,
invariably a stream of thought in reaction against the
unconscious wish, e.g., a self-punishment. Hence I may say, in
general, that an hysterical symptom originates only where two
contrasting wish-fulfillments, having their source in different
psychic systems, are able to combine 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 conviction 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

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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 admissible from both sides, it was
allowed to become a reality. This is the same manner of
consenting to a wish-fulfillment which the queen of the
Parthians chose for the triumvir Crassus. Believing that he had
undertaken 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 foreconscious
permits this only after it has subjected the wish to some
distortions. 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 expression with manifold distortions a wish from the Unc.,
and realize this wish by producing the necessary changes of
energy in the psychic apparatus, and may finally retain it
through the entire duration of sleep.3

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This persistent wish to sleep on the part of the foreconscious in
general facilitates 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 proceeding 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 underlying 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 objective 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 dreams which may disturb the sleeping state from

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within only. "Now, then, sleep on; why, it's but a dream"; this is
in many cases the suggestion 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 occasions 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 conscious faculty of guiding their dream life. Such a
dreamer, when dissatisfied with the course taken by the dream,
breaks it off without awakening, 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 situation, he thinks in
his sleep: "I do not care to continue this dream and exhaust
myself by a pollution; I prefer to defer it in favor of a real
situation."
Footnote 1: They share this character of indestructibility with all
psychic acts that are really unconscious—that is, with psychic

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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.
Footnote 2: Le 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."
Footnote 3: This idea has been borrowed from The Theory of
Sleep by Liébault, who revived hypnotic investigation in our
days. (Du Sommeil provoqué, etc.; Paris, 1889.)
VII
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

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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 remnants 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 recent wish comes to life again
through a reinforcement from the unconscious. 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
confronted, 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, delusion, or the
like, i.e. a thought reinforced by a transference and distorted in
expression by the censor. But its further progress is now
checked through the dormant state of the foreconscious; this
system has apparently 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

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attraction exerted on it by the memory groups, which themselves
exist 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 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 noticed 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 stimuli, which
constitute the sole psychic quality produced in the
transformation 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 furnish 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 functions, it was later found necessary to render the
course of the presentations more independent of the

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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 mental 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-systems. The giving up of interest for the
nocturnal mental processes is indeed purposeful. Nothing is to
disturb the mind; the Forec. wants to sleep. But once the dream
becomes a perception, it is then capable of exciting
consciousness through the qualities thus gained. The sensory
stimulus 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 designated as secondary
elaboration for the sake of connection and comprehensibility.

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This means that the dream is treated by it like any other content
of perception; it is subjected to the same ideas of expectation, as
far at least as the material admits. As far as the direction is
concerned 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 interesting discussion, apparently suggested by
Maury's puzzling guillotine 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 repudiate 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

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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
unconscious 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
consequently 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 manifested in the construction of the dream
loses all its marvels. In my opinion, even the regard for
comprehensibility as an occurrence of perception 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

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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
sufficient intensity to attract consciousness to itself and arouse
the foreconscious, 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 fulfillment 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 expenditure of a certain amount of detached attention

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represent for the dream an economy in energy, keeping in view
the fact that the unconscious 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 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?

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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 processes is the fact that they
remain indestructible. Nothing can be brought to an end in the
unconscious; nothing can cease or be forgotten. This impression
is most strongly gained in the study of the neuroses, especially
of hysteria. The unconscious stream of thought which leads to
the discharge 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 unconscious 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.

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There are, therefore, two exits for the individual unconscious
emotional process. It is either left to itself, in which case it
ultimately breaks through somewhere and secures for once a
discharge for its excitation into motility; or it succumbs to the
influence of the foreconscious, and its excitation becomes
confined through this influence instead of being discharged. 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 actually chased away the fly that has
threatened to disturb his sleep. We can now understand that it is
really more expedient and economical to 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
unconscious throughout the entire period of sleep. We should,
indeed, expect 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

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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 author 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 treatment 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 extent 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 became
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

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connection, I naturally bear in mind the case of the anxiety
dream, and in order not to have the appearance 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-
fulfillment has long ceased to impress us as a contradiction. We
may explain 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 degree of our
psychic normality. Neurotic symptoms show that there is a
conflict between the two systems; the symptoms are the results
of a compromise 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 excitement, 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
incapable of. The result will be an attack of anxiety, just as an
attack of anxiety in the street has often been the cause of

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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 discussion. 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 development 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 secondary activity, the key to the innervation of which is
located in the presentations of the Unc. Through the domination
of the Forec. these presentations 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

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consequence of the repression that has previously taken place—
can only be perceived as pain or anxiety.
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 become sufficiently strong. They thus
stand entirely without the psychological realm of the dream
structure. Were it not for the fact that our subject is connected
through just one factor, namely, the freeing of the Unc. during
sleep, with the subject of the development of anxiety, I could
dispense with discussion of the anxiety dream, and thus avoid all
obscurities connected with it.
As I have often repeated, the theory of the anxiety belongs to the
psychology 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.

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For good reasons I refrain from citing here any of the numerous
examples 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
educated by the Latin "coitus," but to which the dream distinctly
alludes by the selection of the birds' heads. I must have
suspected the sexual significance of the word from the facial
expression of my worldly-wise teacher. 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

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dream must therefore have been that my mother was dying; the
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 suddenly 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 interpretation 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
foreconscious 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 expression 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 indifferent, 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 individual. This
occurrence led him to believe that he himself might have already
heard of a similar episode at the time of the dream. In

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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 relations 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 remarked: "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 established 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 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 excitement is converted into

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fear. At a still earlier period of life sexual emotion directed
toward the parent of opposite sex does not meet with repression
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 rejected 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
observation. 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 example 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
delicate health began to become anxious and dreamy; his sleep
became restless, and about once a week it was interrupted by an
acute attack of anxiety with hallucinations. The memory of these
dreams was invariably very distinct. Thus, he related that the

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devil shouted at him: "Now we have you, now we have you,"
and this was followed by an odor of sulphur; 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 country, 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 continuellement 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 masturbation in former years, that he probably denied
it, and was threatened with severe punishment for his
wrongdoing (his confession: Je ne le ferai 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 subsequently took the form of the punishments with
which he was then threatened.

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Let us, however, quote the conclusions drawn by our author.
This observation 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,
demonomaniacal 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 termination 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 syphilitic state.

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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."
VIII
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 conception of the dream were reached through earlier
investigations in the psychology 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.

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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 confronted with a theme which had been
marked by the sharpest contradictions 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
pronounced, viz. that the dream is a senseless and that it is a
somatic process; 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 waking 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 dream never occupies itself with trifles. But we have
also concurred with the contrary view, viz., that the dream
gathers up the indifferent remnants 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 content, which
gives the dream thought its changed expression by means of
disfigurement. We have said that from the nature of the

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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 become 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
indispensable 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 illusion; 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 disturber 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
demonstrated by Trumbull Ladd, we are nevertheless able to
explain this excitement through the regressive revival of active
memories behind the dream. A modest part in our conception
has also been assigned to the inner organic sensations which are
wont to be taken as the cardinal point in the explanation of the

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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
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 active from the beginning of the dream-work. In
the bitter and seemingly irreconcilable 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
intellectual activity, employing almost every means furnished by
the psychic apparatus; still it cannot be denied that these dream
thoughts have originated 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

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dilapidation of the psychic connections but in the cessation 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 uncontestable; 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 control 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

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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 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
attributable 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.

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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 disposed, 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 processes 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 improvement 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
derived from daily life which are perfectly formed logically. We
cannot therefore doubt that these thoughts originate from our

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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 repeated in the dream
thoughts. There is, however, no need of assuming that this
mental work is performed during sleep, as this would materially
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 becoming 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 Question 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

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and abandoned may spin on without regaining attention unless it
reaches a spot of especially marked intensity which forces the
return of attention. An initial rejection, perhaps consciously
brought about by the judgment on the ground of incorrectness or
unfitness for the actual purpose of the mental act, may therefore
account 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 suppressed 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 "surplus of energy." We
shall be obliged somewhat later to elucidate our assumption
concerning the nature and activity of consciousness.

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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 excitement requiring an outlet
into dormant energy.1 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
active wishes. These may take possession of the excitations in
the circle of thought thus left to itself, establish a connection
between it and the unconscious wish, and transfer to it the
energy inherent in the unconscious wish. Henceforth the
neglected or suppressed train of thought is in a position to
maintain itself, although this reinforcement 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 constellations 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-occupation; or if an
unconscious wish were made active for other—possibly
somatic—reasons and of its own accord sought a transference to

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the psychic remnants not occupied by the Forec. All three cases
finally combine 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 conception
to the other, they thus form single presentations endowed with
marked intensity. Through the repeated recurrence of this
process the intensity of an entire train of ideas may ultimately be
gathered in a single presentation element. This is the principle of
compression or condensation. It is condensation that is mainly
responsible for the strange 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
manifest itself in any character conspicuous enough for internal

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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 vanquished 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

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the dream thoughts, an the other hand by the attraction of the
visual reminiscences in the unconscious. 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" presentation element. On the other
hand, composite and compromise formations occur with
extraordinary frequency when we are trying to find the linguistic
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 utilized in the production of the effect of wit only.
Among these we particularly find associations of the sound and
consonance types.

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4. Contradictory 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 occupation
energy mobile and capable of discharge; the content and the
actual 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 service of regression, when
occasion arises for changing thoughts into pictures. 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 different psychic processes participate in the

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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 incorrect
manner. The latter process we have already set apart as the
dream-work proper. What have we now to advance concerning
this latter 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
enumerated—control the formation of hysterical symptoms. In
hysteria, too, we at once find a series of perfectly correct
thoughts equivalent to our conscious 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 analysis
of the symptom formed that these normal thoughts have been
subjected to abnormal treatment and have been transformed into
the symptom by means of condensation and compromise
formation, through superficial 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 the
psychoneurotic symptoms, we shall feel justified in transferring
to the dream the conclusions urged upon us by hysteria.

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From the theory of hysteria we borrow the proposition that such
an abnormal psychic elaboration of a normal train of thought
takes place only when the latter has been used for the
transference of an unconscious wish which dates from the
infantile life and is in a state of repression. In accordance with
this proposition we have construed the theory of the dream on
the assumption that the actuating dream-wish invariably
originates in the unconscious, 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 excitement. For this reason it was constructed
after the plan of a reflex apparatus; 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 perceived as pain and sets the apparatus in

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motion in order to reproduce a feeling of gratification in which
the diminution of the excitement is perceived 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
discharge of excitement in the apparatus is regulated
automatically by the perception of pleasure and pain. The first
wish must have been an hallucinatory occupation of the memory
for gratification. But this hallucination, unless it were
maintained to the point of exhaustion, proved incapable of
bringing about a cessation of the desire and consequently of
securing the pleasure connected with gratification.
Thus there was required a second activity—in our terminology
the activity of a second system—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 apparatus; these two systems are the germ of the
Unc. and Forec, which we include in the fully developed
apparatus.

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In order to be in a position successfully to change the outer
world through the motility, there is required 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 mental
paths large quantities of energy which would thus flow off to no
purpose, 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 purposes
of displacement. The mechanism of these processes is entirely
unknown 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 Ψ-
system is directed to the free outflow 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

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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 congestion
of the excitements and allows these excitements to flow off to
the motility.
An interesting train of thought now presents itself if we consider
the relations of this inhibition of discharge by the second system
to the regulation through the principle of pain. Let us now seek
the counterpart of the primary feeling of gratification, namely,
the objective feeling of fear. A perceptive stimulus acts on the
primitive apparatus, becoming the source of a painful emotion.
This will then be followed by irregular motor manifestations
until one of these withdraws the apparatus from perception and
at the same time from pain, but on the reappearance of the
perception this manifestation will immediately repeat itself
(perhaps as a movement of flight) until the perception has again
disappeared. But there will here remain no tendency again to
occupy the perception 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 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
facilitated also by the fact that, unlike perception, memory does

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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 virtue of the principle of pain the first system is therefore
altogether incapable 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 completely 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 occupies 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

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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 expenditure 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
emanating from it. Whatever withdraws itself from this
inhibition also remains 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 adaptation 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 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 secondary process has abandoned this intention
and undertaken instead the task of bringing about a thought
identity. All thinking is only a circuitous path from the memory
of gratification taken as an end-presentation to the identical

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occupation of the same memory, which is again to be attained 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 occurring in the presentations impede
the attainment of this end-identity; by substituting one idea for
the other they deviate from the path which otherwise would have
been continued from the original idea. Such processes are
therefore carefully avoided in the secondary thinking. Nor is it
difficult to understand that the principle of pain also impedes the
progress of the mental stream in its pursuit of the thought
identity, though, indeed, it offers to the mental stream the most
important points of departure. 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 energy brought about by consciousness. But we
are aware that this refinement 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.

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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 formula 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
period.
When I termed one of the psychic processes in the psychic
apparatus 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 processes are
present in the apparatus from the beginning, while the secondary
processes develop gradually in the course of life, inhibiting and
covering the primary ones, and gaining complete mastery over
them perhaps only at the height of life. Owing to this retarded

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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 unconscious
wishes establish for all subsequent psychic efforts a compulsion
to which they have to submit and which they must strive if
possible to divert from its course and direct to higher aims. In
consequence of this retardation of the foreconscious occupation
a large sphere of the memory material remains inaccessible.
Among these indestructible and unincumbered wish feelings
originating from the infantile life, there are also some, the
fulfillments of which have entered into a relation of
contradiction 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 transformation can be produced constitutes the
problem of repression, which we need here only skim over. It
will suffice to remark that such a transformation 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

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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 infantile memories, from the very beginning
withdrawn from the Forec., 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 occupation of the Forec. A defensive struggle
then ensues, inasmuch as the Forec. reinforces the antagonism
against the repressed ideas, and subsequently this leads to a
penetration by the thoughts of transference (the carriers of the

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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 abandoned 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 support 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
displacements 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

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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 transformation) 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
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 formations. 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.2 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

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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 matter, in an erroneous and fragmentary manner.
Whatever changes may be made in the interpretation of the
psychic censor and of the correct and of the abnormal
elaboration of the dream content, the fact nevertheless remains
that such processes are active in dream formation, and that
essentially 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 mental faculties. The objection
that no deduction can be drawn regarding the dreams of healthy
persons from my own dreams and from those of neurotic
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 normal 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 instrument, and the dream points out for us one of the
roads leading to a knowledge of this structure. If, in addition to

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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; theoretically, 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
contradictions, finds ways and means of obtruding itself on
consciousness during the night under the domination of the
compromise formations.
"Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo."
At any rate the interpretation 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.

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Disease—at least that which is justly termed functional—is not
due to the destruction of this apparatus, and the establishment of
new splittings in its interior; it is rather to be explained
dynamically through the strengthening and weakening of the
components in the play of forces by which so many activities are
concealed during 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.
Footnote 1: Cf. the significant observations by J. Bueuer in our
Studies on Hysteria, 1895, and 2nd ed. 1909.
Footnote 2: Here, 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 effort,
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

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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 interpretation 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 perversion
and bisexuality; and for that reason I have reserved this material
for another connection.
IX
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

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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 foreconscious 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 interlineation 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 assume 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
affairs 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

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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 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
corresponding to them. Everything that can become an object of
our internal perception is virtual, like the image in the telescope
produced by the passage 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
refraction 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

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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 occurrences" are an
obvious contradiction, a psychological estimate of the
observations gained by the physician from abnormal mental
states was precluded. The physician and the philosopher agree
only when both acknowledge 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 conviction 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
physician does not learn of these unconscious processes until
they have exerted such an effect on consciousness as to admit
communication or observation. But this effect of consciousness
may show a psychic character widely differing from the
unconscious process, so that the internal perception cannot
possibly recognize the one as a substitute for the other. The
physician must reserve for himself the right to penetrate, by a

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process of deduction, from the effect on consciousness to the
unconscious 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 becomes the indispensable preliminary condition
for any correct insight into 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 unconscious,
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
authors will be laid aside when the old opposition between
conscious life and dream life is abandoned and the unconscious

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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 unconscious 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 productive 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. But it is a much abused privilege
of the conscious activity that it is allowed to hide from us all
other activities wherever it participates.

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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 reinforcements 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 philosophers, nor with the unconscious of Lipps. In the
latter uses it is intended to designate only the opposite of
conscious. That there are also unconscious psychic processes
beside the conscious ones is the hotly contested 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

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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 establish its correctness beyond
any doubt. The new fact that we have learned from the analysis
of the psychopathological formations, and indeed from their first
member, viz. dreams, is that the unconscious—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
distinguished 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 emotions, after the
observance of certain rules, can reach consciousness, perhaps
not before they have again undergone censorship, but still
regardless 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 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 consciousness. 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.

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We must also steer clear of the distinctions superconscious and
subconscious 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 fundamental idea of schematic
undertaking we can conceive the conscious perception 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
perception 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 teleological 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 excitement flows to the Cons, sensory organ from
two sides, firstly from the P-system whose excitement,
qualitatively determined, probably experiences a new

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elaboration until it comes to conscious perception; and,
secondly, from the interior of the apparatus itself, the
quantitative processes 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
complicated thought structures are possible even without the
coöperation of consciousness, have found it difficult to attribute
any function to consciousness; 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
attention to those paths on which the incoming sensory
excitement is diffused; the qualitative excitement of the P-
system serves the mobile quantity of the psychic apparatus as a
regulator for its discharge. We 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
influences 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 displacements of occupation

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automatically, but it is quite possible that the consciousness of
these qualities adds a second and more subtle regulation 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 liberation 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 capacity 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 rejection of inhibition and
of psychic domination, is so much more easily accomplished
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

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quantity, is demonstrated 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 mental
processes are in themselves devoid of quality except for the
excitements of pleasure and pain accompanying them, which, as
we know, are to be held in check as possible disturbances of
thought. In order to endow them with a quality, they are
associated in man with verbal memories, the qualitative
remnants of which suffice to draw upon them the attention of
consciousness which in turn endows thought with a new mobile
energy.
The manifold problems of consciousness in their entirety can be
examined only through an analysis of the hysterical mental
process. From this analysis we receive the impression that the
transition from the foreconscious to the occupation of
consciousness is also connected with a censorship similar to the
one between the Unc. and the Forec. This censorship, 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 consciousness, under restriction is found included
within the picture of the psychoneurotic phenomena; every case
points to the intimate and twofold connection between the

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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 complained 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 described 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
innocent complaint a phantasy was admitted to consciousness
which otherwise 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,

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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 before
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 unfavorable, on moves that were not safe
to make. He then saw a dagger lying on the checker-board, an
object belonging to his father, but transferred to the checker-
board by his phantasy. Then a sickle was lying on 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 pictures. 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 separation of his father from
his tender and delicate mother, and the remarrying 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 furnished by a reminiscence from mythology, The sickle
was the one with which Zeus castrated his father; the scythe and
the likeness of the peasant represented Kronos, the violent old
man who eats his children and upon whom Zeus wreaks

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vengeance in so unfilial a manner. The marriage 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
preparation for an understanding of neuroses. Who can foresee
the importance of a thorough knowledge of the structure and
activities of the psychic apparatus 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 individual
character? Have not the unconscious feelings revealed by the
dream the value of real forces in the psychic life? Should we
take lightly the ethical significance of the suppressed wishes
which, as they now create dreams, may some day create other
things?

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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 Emperor. 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 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 intermediate 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 consciousness 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 instructive to become familiar with the much

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raked-up soil from which our virtues proudly arise. For the
complication of human character moving dynamically 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.
End of the EBook of Dream Psychology, by Sigmund Freud