THE WISH-FULFILMENT

The dream of the burning child (cited above) affords us a welcome opportunity for
appreciating the difficulties confronting the theory of wish-fulfilment. That a dream
should be nothing but a wish-fulfilment must undoubtedly seem strange to us all -- and
not only because of the contradiction offered by the anxiety-dream. Once our first
analyses had given us the enlightenment that meaning and psychic value are concealed
behind our dreams, we could hardly have expected so unitary a determination of this
meaning. According to the correct but summary definition of Aristotle, the dream is a
continuation of thinking in sleep. Now if, during the day, our thoughts perform such a
diversity of psychic acts -- judgments, conclusions, the answering of objections,
expectations, intentions, etc. -- why should they be forced at night to confine themselves
to the production of wishes only? Are there not, on the contrary, many dreams that
present an altogether different psychic act in dream-form -- for example, anxious care --
and is not the father's unusually transparent dream of the burning child such a dream?
From the gleam of light that falls upon his eyes while he is asleep the father draws the
apprehensive conclusion that a candle has fallen over and may be burning the body; he
transforms this conclusion into a dream by embodying it in an obvious situation enacted
in the present tense. What part is played in this dream by the wish-fulfilment? And how
can we possibly mistake the predominance of the thought continued from the waking
state or evoked by the new sensory impression?
All these considerations are justified, and force us to look more closely into the role of
the wish-fulfilment in dreams, and the significance of the waking thoughts continued in
sleep.
It is precisely the wish-fulfilment that has already caused us to divide all dreams into two
groups. We have found dreams which were plainly wish-fulfilments; and others in which
the wish-fulfilment was unrecognisable and was often concealed by every available
means. In this latter class of dreams we recognised the influence of the dream-censorship.
The undisguised wish-dreams were found chiefly in children; short, frank wish-dreams
seemed (I purposely emphasise this word) to occur also in adults.
We may now ask whence in each case does the wish that is realised in the dream
originate? But to what opposition or to what diversity do we relate this `whence'? I think
to the opposition between conscious daily life and an unconscious psychic activity which
is able to make itself perceptible only at night. I thus find a threefold possibility for the
origin of a wish. Firstly, it may have been excited during the day, and owing to external
circumstances may have remained unsatisfied; there is thus left for the night an
acknowledged and unsatisfied wish. Secondly, it may have emerged during the day, only
to be rejected; there is thus left for the night an unsatisfied but suppressed wish. Thirdly,
it may have no relation to daily life, but may belong to those wishes which awake only at
night out of the suppressed material in us. If we turn to our scheme of the psychic
apparatus, we can localise a wish of the first order in the system Pcs. We may assume
that a wish of the second order has been forced back from the Pcs. system into the Ucs.
system, where alone, if anywhere, can it maintain itself; as for the wish-impulse of the
third order, we believe that it is wholly incapable of leaving the Ucs. system. Now, have
the wishes arising from these different sources the same value for the dream, the same
power to incite a dream?
On surveying the dreams at our disposal with a view to answering this question, we are at
once moved to add as a fourth source of the dream-wish the actual wish-impetus which
arises during the night (for example, the stimulus of thirst, and sexual desire). It then
seems to us probable that the source of the dream-wish does not affect its capacity to
incite a dream. I have in mind the dream of the child who continued the voyage that had
been interrupted during the day, and the other children's dreams cited in the same chapter;
they are explained by an unfulfilled but unsuppressed wish of the daytime. That wishes
suppressed during the day assert themselves in dreams is shown by a great many
examples. I will mention a very simple dream of this kind. A rather sarcastic lady, whose
younger friend has become engaged to be married, is asked in the daytime by her
acquaintances whether she knows her friend's fiancé, and what she thinks of him. She
replies with unqualified praise, imposing silence on her own judgment, although she
would have liked to tell the truth, namely, that he is a commonplace fellow -- one meets
such by the dozen (Dutzendmensch). The following night she dreams that the same
question is put to her, and that she replies with the formula: `In case of subsequent
orders, it will suffice to mention the reference number.' Finally, as the result of numerous
analyses, we learn that the wish in all dreams that have been subject to distortion has its
origin in the unconscious, and could not become perceptible by day. At first sight, then, it
seems that in respect of dream-formation all wishes are of equal value and equal power.
I cannot prove here that this is not really the true state of affairs, but I am strongly
inclined to assume a stricter determination of the dream-wish. Children's dreams leave us
in no doubt that a wish unfulfilled during the day may instigate a dream. But we must not
forget that this is, after all, the wish of a child; that it is a wish-impulse of the strength
peculiar to childhood. I very much doubt whether a wish unfulfilled in the daytime would
suffice to create a dream in an adult. It would rather seem that as we learn to control our
instinctual life by intellection we more and more renounce as unprofitable the formation
or retention of such intense wishes as are natural to childhood. In this, indeed, there may
be individual variations; some retain the infantile type of the psychic processes longer
than others; just as we find such differences in the gradual decline of the originally vivid
visual imagination. In general, however, I am of the opinion that unfulfilled wishes of the
day are insufficient to produce a dream in adults. I will readily admit that the wishimpulses
originating in consciousness contribute to the instigation of dreams, but they
probably do no more. The dream would not occur if the preconscious wish were not
reinforced from another source.
That source is the unconscious. I believe that the conscious wish becomes effective in
exciting a dream only when it succeeds in arousing a similar unconscious wish which
reinforces it. From the indications obtained in the psychoanalysis of the neuroses I
believe that these unconscious wishes are always active and ready to express themselves
whenever they find an opportunity of allying themselves with an impulse from
consciousness, and transferring their own greater intensity to the lesser intensity of the
latter.1 It must, therefore, seem that the conscious wish alone has been realised in the
dream; but a slight peculiarity in the form of the dream will put us on the track of the
powerful ally from the unconscious. These ever-active and, as it were, immortal wishes
of our unconscious recall the legendary Titans who, from time immemorial, have been
buried under the mountains which were once hurled upon them by the victorious gods,
and even now quiver from time to time at the convulsions of their mighty limbs. These
wishes, existing in repression, are themselves of infantile origin, as we learn from the
psychological investigation of the neurouses. Let me, therefore, set aside the view
previously expressed, that it matters little whence the dream-wish originates, and replace
it by another, namely: the wish manifested in the dream must be an infantile wish. In the
adult it originates in the Ucs., while in the child, in whom no division and censorship
exist as yet between the Pcs. and Ucs., or in whom these are only in process of formation,
it is an unfulfilled and unrepressed wish from the waking state. I am aware that this
conception cannot be generally demonstrated, but I maintain that it can often be
demonstrated even where one would not have suspected it, and that it cannot be generally
refuted.
In dream-formation, the wish-impulses which are left over from the conscious waking
life are, therefore, to be relegated to the background. I cannot admit that they play any
part except that attributed to the material of actual sensations during sleep in relation to
the dream-content. If I now take into account those other psychic instigations left over
from the waking life of the day, which are not wishes, I shall merely be adhering to the
course mapped out for me by this line of thought. We may succeed in provisionally
disposing of the energetic cathexis of our waking thoughts by deciding to go to sleep. He
is a good sleeper who can do this; Napoleon I is reputed to have been a model of this
kind. But we do not always succeed in doing it, or in doing it completely. Unsolved
problems, harassing cares, overwhelming impressions, continue the activity of our
thought even during sleep, maintaining psychic processes in the system which we have
termed the preconscious. The thought-impulses continued into sleep may be divided into
the following groups:
1. Those which have not been completed during the day, owing to some accidental
cause.
2. Those which have been left uncompleted because our mental powers have failed
us, i.e. unsolved problems.
3. Those which have been turned back and suppressed during the day. This is
reinforced by a powerful fourth group --
4. Those which have been excited in our Ucs. during the day by the workings of the
Pcs.; and finally we may add a fifth, consisting of --
5. The indifferent impressions of the day, which have therefore been left unsettled.
We need not underrate the psychic intensities introduced into sleep by these residues of
the day's waking life, especially those emanating from the group of the unsolved issues. It
is certain that these excitations continue to strive for expression during the night, and we
may assume with equal certainty that the state of sleep renders impossible the usual
continuance of the process of excitation in the preconscious and its termination in
becoming conscious. In so far as we can become conscious of our mental processes in the
ordinary way, even during the night, to that extent we are simply not asleep. I cannot say
what change is produced in the Pcs. system by the state of sleep,2 but there is no doubt
that the psychological characteristics of sleep are to be sought mainly in the cathectic
changes occurring just in this system, which dominates, moreover, the approach to
motility, paralysed during sleep. On the other hand, I have found nothing in the
psychology of dreams to warrant the assumption that sleep produces any but secondary
changes in the conditions of the Ucs. system. Hence, for the nocturnal excitations in the
Pcs. there remains no other path than that taken by the wish-excitations from the Ucs.;
they must seek reinforcement from the Ucs., and follow the detours of the unconscious
excitations. But what is the relation of the preconscious day-residues to the dream? There
is no doubt that they penetrate abundantly into the dream; that they utilise the dreamcontent
to obtrude themselves upon consciousness even during the night; indeed, they
sometimes even dominate the dream-content, and impel it to continue the work of the
day; it is also certain that the day-residues may just as well have any other character as
that of wishes. But it is highly instructive, and for the theory of wish-fulfilment of quite
decisive importance, 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, e.g. the dream in which my friend Otto
seems to show the symptoms of Basedow's disease (p. 163). Otto's appearance gave me
some concern during the day, and this worry, like everything else relating to him, greatly
affected me. I may assume that this concern followed me into sleep. I was probably bent
on finding out what was the matter with him. During the night my concern found
expression in the dream which I have recorded. Not only was its content senseless, but it
failed to show any wish-fulfilment. But I began to search for the source of this
incongruous expression of the solicitude felt during the day, and analysis revealed a
connection. I identified my friend Otto with a certain Baron L. and myself with a
Professor R. There was only one explanation of my being impelled to select just this
substitute for the day-thought. I must always have been ready in the Ucs. to identify
myself with Professor R., as this meant the realisation of one of the immortal infantile
wishes, viz. the wish to become great. Repulsive ideas respecting my friend, ideas 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 had likewise found some
sort of expression by means of a substitute in the dream-content. The day-thought, which
was in itself not a wish, but on the contrary a worry, had in some way to find a
connection with some infantile wish, now unconscious and suppressed, which then
allowed it -- duly dressed up -- to `arise' for consciousness. The more domineering the
worry the more forced could be the connection to be established; between the content of
the wish and that of the worry there need be no connection, nor was there one in our
example.
It would perhaps be appropriate, in dealing with this problem, to inquire how a dream
behaves when material is offered to it in the dream-thoughts which flatly opposes a wishfulfilment;
such as justified worries, painful reflections and distressing realisations. The
many possible results may be classified as follows: (a) The dream-work succeeds in
replacing all painful ideas by contrary ideas, and suppressing the painful affect belonging
to them. This, then, results in a pure and simple satisfaction-dream, a palpable `wishfulfilment',
concerning which there is nothing more to be said. (b) The painful ideas find
their way into the manifest dream-content, more or less modified, but nevertheless quite
recognisable. This is the case which raises doubts about the wish-theory of dreams, and
thus calls for further investigation. Such dreams with a painful content may either be
indifferent in feeling, or they may convey the whole painful affect, which the ideas
contained in them seem to justify, or they may even lead to the development of anxiety to
the point of waking.
Analysis then shows that even these painful dreams are wish-fulfilments. An unconscious
and repressed wish, whose fulfilment could only be felt as painful by the dreamer's ego,
has seized the opportunity offered by the continued cathexis of painful day-residues, has
lent them its support, and has thus made them capable of being dreamed. But whereas in
case (a) the unconscious wish coincided with the conscious one, in case (b) the discord
between the unconscious and the conscious -- the repressed material and the ego -- is
revealed, and the situation in the fairy-tale, of the three wishes which the fairy offers to
the married couple, is realised (see [note 32] below, p. 434). The gratification in respect
of the fulfilment of the repressed wish may prove to be so great that it balances the
painful affects adhering to the day-residues; the dream is then indifferent in its affective
tone, although it is on the one hand the fulfilment of a wish, and on the other the
fulfilment of a fear. Or it may happen that the sleep ego plays an even more extensive
part in the dream-formation, that it reacts with violent resentment to the accomplished
satisfaction of the repressed wish, and even goes so far as to make an end of the dream by
means of anxiety. It is thus not difficult to recognise that dreams of pain and anxiety are,
in accordance with our theory, just as much wish-fulfilments as are the straightforward
dreams of gratification.
Painful dreams may also be `punishment dreams'. It must be admitted that the recognition
of these dreams adds something that is, in a certain sense, new to the theory of dreams.
What is fulfilled by them is once more an unconscious wish -- the wish for the
punishment of the dreamer for a repressed, prohibited wish-impulse. To this extent these
dreams comply with the requirement here laid down: that the motive-power behind the
dream-formation must be furnished by a wish belonging to the unconscious. But a finer
psychological dissection allows us to recognise the difference between this and the other
wish-dreams. In the dreams of group (b) the unconscious dream-forming wish belonged
to the repressed material. In the punishment-dreams it is likewise an unconscious wish,
but one which we must attribute not to the repressed material but to the `ego'.
Punishment-dreams point, therefore, to the possibility of a still more extensive
participation of the ego in dream-formation. The mechanism of dream-formation
becomes indeed in every way more transparent if in place of the antithesis `conscious'
and `unconscious', we put the antithesis: `ego' and `repressed'. This, however, cannot be
done without taking into account what happens in the psychoneuroses, and for this reason
it has not been done in this book. Here I need only remark that the occurrence of
punishment-dreams is not generally subject to the presence of painful day-residues. They
originate indeed most readily if the contrary is true, if the thoughts which are dayresidues
are of a gratifying nature, but express illicit gratifications. Of these thoughts
nothing then finds its way into the manifest dream except their contrary, just as was the
case in the dreams of group (a). Thus it would be the essential characteristic of
punishment-dreams that in them it is not the unconscious wish from the repressed
material (from the system Ucs.) that is responsible for dream-formation, but the punitive
wish reacting against it, a wish pertaining to the ego, even though it is unconscious (i.e.
preconscious).3
I will elucidate some of the foregoing observations by means of a dream of my own, and
above all I will try to show how the dream-work deals with a day-residue involving
painful expectation:
Indistinct beginning. I tell my wife I have some news for her, something very special. She
becomes frightened, and does not wish to hear it. I assure her that on the contrary it is
something which will please her greatly, and I begin to tell her that our son's Officers'
Corps has sent a sum of money (5,000 k.?) . . . something about honourable mention . . .
distribution . . . at the same time I have gone with her into a small room, like a
storeroom, in order to fetch something from it. Suddenly I see my son appear; he is not in
uniform but rather in a tight-fitting sports suit (like a seal?) with a small cap. He climbs
onto a basket which stands to one side near a chest, in order to put something on this
chest: I address him; no answer. It seems to me that his face or forehead is bandaged, he
arranges something in his mouth, pushing something into it. Also his hair shows a glint of
grey. I reflect: Can he be so exhausted? And has he false teeth? Before I can address him
again I awake without anxiety, but with palpitations. My clock points to 2.30 a.m.
To give a full analysis is once more impossible. I shall therefore confine myself to
emphasising some decisive points. Painful expectations of the day had given occasion for
this dream; once again there had been no news for over a week from my son, who was
fighting at the front. It is easy to see that in the dream-content the conviction that he has
been killed or wounded finds expression. At the beginning of the dream one can observe
an energetic effort to replace the painful thoughts by their contrary. I have to impart
something very pleasing, something about sending money, honourable mention, and
distribution. (The sum of money originates in a gratifying incident of my medical
practice; it is therefore trying to lead the dream away altogether from its theme.) But this
effort fails. The boy's mother has a presentiment of something terrible and does not wish
to listen. The disguises are too thin; the reference to the material to be suppressed shows
through everywhere. If my son is killed, then his comrades will send back his property; I
shall have to distribute whatever he has left among his sisters, brothers and other people.
Honourable mention is frequently awarded to an officer after he has died the `hero's
death'. The dream thus strives to give direct expression to what it at first wished to deny,
whilst at the same time the wishfulfilling tendency reveals itself by distortion. (The
change of locality in the dream is no doubt to be understood as threshold symbolism, in
line with Silberer's view.) We have indeed no idea what lends it the requisite motivepower.
But my son does not appear as `falling' (on the field of battle) but `climbing'. --
He was, in fact, a daring mountaineer. -- He is not in uniform, but in a sports suit; that is,
the place of the fatality now dreaded has been taken by an accident which happened to
him at one time when he was ski-running, when he fell and fractured his thigh. But the
nature of his costume, which makes him look like a seal, recalls immediately a younger
person, our comical little grandson; the grey hair recalls his father, our son-in-law, who
has had a bad time in the War. What does this signify? But let us leave this: the locality, a
pantry, the chest, from which he wants to take something (in the dream, to put something
on it), are unmistakable allusions to an accident of my own, brought upon myself when I
was between two and three years of age. I climbed on a foot-stool in the pantry, in order
to get something nice which was on a chest or table. The foot-stool tumbled over and its
edge struck me behind the lower jaw. I might very well have knocked all my teeth out. At
this point, an admonition presents itself: it serves you right -- like a hostile impulse
against the valiant warrior. A profounder analysis enables me to detect the hidden
impulse, which would be able to find satisfaction in the dreaded mishap to my son. It is
the envy of youth which the elderly man believes that he has thoroughly stifled in actual
life. There is no mistaking the fact that it was the very intensity of the painful
apprehension lest such a misfortune should really happen that searched out for its
alleviation such a repressed wish-fulfilment.
I can now clearly define what the unconscious wish means for the dream. I will admit
that there is a whole class of dreams in which the incitement originates mainly or even
exclusively from the residues of the day; and returning to the dream about my friend
Otto, I believe that even my desire to become at last a professor extraordinarius would
have allowed me to sleep in peace that night, had not the day's concern for my friend's
health continued active. But this worry alone would not have produced a dream; the
motive-power needed by the dream had to be contributed by a wish, and it was the
business of my concern to find such a wish for itself, as the motive power of the dream.
To put it figuratively, it is quite possible that a day-thought plays the part of the
entrepreneur in the dream; but the entrepreneur, who, as we say, has the idea, and feels
impelled to realise it, can do nothing without capital; he needs a capitalist who will
defray the expense, and this capitalist, who contributes the psychic expenditure for the
dream, is invariably and indisputably, whatever the nature of the waking thoughts, a wish
from the unconscious.
In other cases the capitalist himself is the entrepreneur; this, indeed, seems to be the
more usual case. An unconscious wish is excited by the day's work, and this now creates
the dream. And the dream-processes provide a parallel for all the other possibilities of the
economic relationship here used as an illustration. Thus the entrepreneur may himself
contribute a little of the capital, or several entrepreneurs may seek the aid of the same
capitalist, or several capitalists may jointly supply the capital required by the
entrepreneurs. Thus there are dreams sustained by more than one dream-wish, and many
similar variations, which may be readily imagined, and which are of no further interest to
us. What is still lacking to our discussion of the dream-wish we shall only be able to
complete later on.
The tertium comparationis in the analogies here employed, the quantitative element of
which an allotted amount is placed at the free disposal of the dream, admits of a still
closer application to the elucidation of the dream-structure. As shown on pp. 190 ff., we
can recognise in most dreams a centre supplied with a special sensory intensity. This is as
a rule the direct representation of the wish-fulfilment; for if we reverse the displacements
of the dream-work we find that the psychic intensity of the elements in the dreamthoughts
is replaced by the sensory intensity of the elements in the dream-content. The
elements in the neighbourhood of the wish-fulfilment have often nothing to do with its
meaning, but prove to be the offshoots of painful thoughts which are opposed to the wish.
But owing to their connection with the central element, often artificially established, they
secure so large a share of its intensity as to become capable of representation. Thus, the
representative energy of the wish-fulfilment diffuses itself over a certain sphere of
association, within which all elements are raised to representation, including even those
that are in themselves without resources. In dreams containing several dynamic wishes
we can easily separate and delimit the spheres of the individual wish-fulfilments, and we
shall find that the gaps in the dream are often of the nature of boundary-zones.
Although the foregoing remarks have restricted the significance of the day-residues for
the dream, they are none the less deserving of some further attention. For they must be a
necessary ingredient in dream-formation, inasmuch as experience reveals the surprising
fact that every dream shows in its content a connection with a recent waking impression,
often of the most indifferent kind. So far we have failed to understand the necessity for
this addition to the dream-mixture (p. 84). This necessity becomes apparent only when
we bear in mind the part played by the unconscious wish, and seek further information in
the psychology of the neuroses. We shall then learn that an unconscious idea, as such, is
quite incapable of entering into the preconscious, and that it can exert an influence there
only by establishing touch with a harmless idea already belonging to the preconscious, to
which it transfers its intensity, and by which it allows itself to be screened. This is the
fact of transference, which furnishes the explanation of so many surprising occurrences
in the psychic life of neurotics. The transference may leave the idea from the
preconscious unaltered, though the latter will thus acquire an unmerited intensity, or it
may force upon this some modification derived from the content of the transferred idea. I
trust the reader will pardon my fondness for comparisons with daily life, but I feel
tempted to say that the situation for the repressed idea is like that of the American dentist
in Austria, who may not carry on his practice unless he can get a duly installed doctor of
medicine to serve him as a signboard and legal `cover'. Further, just as it is not exactly
the busiest physicians who form such alliances with dental practitioners, so in the psychic
life the choice as regards covers for repressed ideas does not fall upon such preconscious
or conscious ideas as have themselves attracted enough of the attention active in the
preconscious. The unconscious prefers to entangle with its connections either those
impressions and ideas of the preconscious which have remained unnoticed as being
indifferent or those which have immediately had attention withdrawn from them again
(by rejection). It is a well-known proposition of the theory of associations, confirmed by
all experience, that ideas which have formed a very intimate connection in one direction
assume a negative type of attitude towards whole groups of new connections. I have even
attempted at one time to base a theory of hysterical paralysis on this principle.
If we assume that the same need of transference on the part of the repressed ideas, of
which we have become aware through the analysis of the neurosis, makes itself felt in
dreams also, we can at once explain two of the problems of the dream: namely, that every
dream-analysis reveals an interweaving of a recent impression, and that this recent
element is often of the most indifferent character. We may add what we have already
learned elsewhere, that the reason why these recent and indifferent elements so frequently
find their way into the dream-content as substitutes for the very oldest elements of the
dream-thoughts is that they have the least to fear from the resisting censorship. But while
this freedom from censorship explains only the preference shown to the trivial elements,
the constant presence of recent elements points to the necessity for transference. Both
groups of impressions satisfy the demand of the repressed ideas for material still free
from associations, the indifferent ones because they have offered no occasion for
extensive associations, and the recent ones because they have not had sufficient time to
form such associations.
We thus see that the day-residues, among which we may now include the indifferent
impressions, not only borrow something from the UCS. when they secure a share in
dream-formation -- namely, the motive-power at the disposal of the repressed wish -- but
they also offer to the unconscious something that is indispensable to it, namely, the points
of attachment necessary for transference. If we wished to penetrate more deeply into the
psychic processes, we should have to throw a clearer light on the play of excitations
between the preconscious and the unconscious, and indeed the study of the
psychoneuroses would impel us to do so; but dreams, as it happens, give us no help in
this respect.
Just one further remark as to the day-residues. There is no doubt that it is really these that
disturb our sleep, and not our dreams which, on the contrary, strive to guard our sleep.
But we shall return to this point later.
So far we have discussed the dream-wish; we have traced it back to the sphere of the
UCS., and have analysed its relation to the day-residues, which, in their turn, may be
either wishes, or psychic impulses of any other kind, or simply recent impressions. We
have thus found room for the claims that can be made for the dream-forming significance
of our waking mental activity in all its multifariousness. It might even prove possible to
explain, on the basis of our train of thought, those extreme cases in which the dream,
continuing the work of the day, brings to a happy issue an unsolved problem of waking
life. We merely lack a suitable example to analyse, in order to uncover the infantile or
repressed source of wishes, the tapping of which has so successfully reinforced the efforts
of the preconscious activity. But we are not a step nearer to answering the question: Why
is it that the unconscious can furnish in sleep nothing more than the motive-power for a
wish-fulfilment? The answer to this question must elucidate the psychic nature of the
state of wishing: and it will be given with the aid of the notion of the psychic apparatus.
We do not doubt that this apparatus, too, has only arrived at its present perfection by a
long process of evolution. Let us attempt to restore it as it existed in an earlier stage of
capacity. From postulates to be confirmed in other ways we know that at first the
apparatus strove to keep itself as free from stimulation as possible, and therefore, in its
early structure, adopted the arrangement of a reflex apparatus, which enabled it promptly
to discharge by the motor paths any sensory excitation reaching it from without. But this
simple function was disturbed by the exigencies of life, to which the apparatus owes the
impetus toward further development. The exigencies of life first confronted it in the form
of the great physical needs. The excitation aroused by the inner need seeks an outlet in
motility, which we may describe as `internal change' or `expression of the emotions'. The
hungry child cries or struggles helplessly. But its situation remains unchanged; for the
excitation proceeding from the inner need has not the character of a momentary impact,
but of a continuing pressure. A change can occur only if, in some way (in the case of the
child by external assistance), there is an experience of satisfaction, which puts an end to
the internal excitation. An essential constituent of this experience is the appearance of a
certain percept (of food in our example), the memory-image of which is henceforth
associated with the memory-trace of the excitation arising from the need. Thanks to the
established connection, there results, at the next occurrence of this need, a psychic
impulse which seeks to revive the memory-image of the former percept, and to re-evoke
the former percept itself; that is, it actually seeks to re-establish the situation of the first
satisfaction. Such an impulse is what we call a wish; the reappearance of the perception
constitutes the wish-fulfilment, and the full cathexis of the perception, by the excitation
springing from the need, constitutes the shortest path to the wish-fulfilment. We may
assume a primitive state of the psychic apparatus in which this path is actually followed,
i.e. in which the wish ends in hallucination. This first psychic activity therefore aims at an
identity of perception: that is, at a repetition of that perception which is connected with
the satisfaction of the need.
This primitive mental activity must have been modified by bitter practical experience into
a secondary and more appropriate activity. The establishment of identity of perception by
the short regressive path within the apparatus does not produce the same result in another
respect as follows upon cathexis of the same perception coming from without. The
satisfaction does not occur, and the need continues. In order to make the internal cathexis
equivalent to the external one, the former would have to be continuously sustained, just
as actually happens in the hallucinatory psychoses and in hunger-fantasies, which exhaust
their performance in maintaining their hold on the object desired. In order to attain to
more appropriate use of the psychic energy, it becomes necessary to suspend the full
regression, so that it does not proceed beyond the memory-image, and thence can seek
other paths, leading ultimately to the production of the desired identity from the side of
the outer world.4 This inhibition, as well as the subsequent deflection of the excitation,
becomes the task of a second system, which controls voluntary motility, i.e. a system
whose activity first leads on to the use of motility for purposes remembered in advance.
But all this complicated mental activity, which works its way from the memory-image to
the production of identity of perception via the outer world, merely represents a
roundabout way to wish-fulfilment made necessary by experience.5 Thinking is indeed
nothing but a substitute for the hallucinatory wish; and if the dream is called a wishfulfilment,
this becomes something self-evident, since nothing but a wish can impel our
psychic apparatus to activity.
The dream, which fulfils its wishes by following the short regressive path, has thereby
simply preserved for us a specimen of the primary method of operation of the psychic
apparatus, which has been abandoned as inappropriate. What once prevailed in the
waking state, when our psychic life was still young and inefficient, seems to have been
banished into our nocturnal life; just as we still find in the nursery those discarded
primitive weapons of adult humanity, the bow and arrow. Dreaming is a fragment of the
superseded psychic life of the child. In the psychoses those modes of operation of the
psychic apparatus which are normally suppressed in the waking state reassert themselves,
and thereupon betray their inability to satisfy our demands in the outer world.6
The unconscious wish-impulses evidently strive to assert themselves even during the day,
and the fact of transference, as well as the psychoses, tells us that they endeavour to force
their way through the preconscious system to consciousness and the command of
motility. Thus, in the censorship between UCS. and PCS., which the dream forces us to
assume, we must recognise and respect the guardian of our psychic health. But is it not
carelessness on the part of this guardian to diminish his vigilance at night, and to allow
the suppressed impulses of the UCS. to achieve expression, thus again making possible
the process of hallucinatory regression? I think not, for when the critical guardian goes to
rest -- and we have proof that his slumber is not profound -- he takes care to close the
gate to motility. No matter what impulses from the usually inhibited UCS. may bustle
about the stage, there is no need to interfere with them; they remain harmless, because
they are not in a position to set in motion the motor apparatus which alone can operate to
produce any change in the outer world. Sleep guarantees the security of the fortress
which has to be guarded. The state of affairs is less harmless when a displacement of
energies is produced, not by the decline at night in the energy put forth by the critical
censorship, but by the pathological enfeeblement of the latter, or the pathological
reinforcement of the unconscious excitations, and this while the preconscious is cathected
and the gates of motility are open. The guardian is then overpowered; the unconscious
excitations subdue the PCS., and from the PCS. they dominate our speech and action, or
they enforce hallucinatory regressions, thus directing an apparatus not designed for them
by virtue of the attraction exerted by perceptions on the distribution of our psychic
energy. We call this condition psychosis.
We now find ourselves in the most favourable position for continuing the construction of
our psychological scaffolding, which we left after inserting the two systems, UCS. and
PCS. However, we still have reason to give further consideration to the wish as the sole
psychic motive-power in the dream. We have accepted the explanation that the reason
why the dream is in every case a wish-fulfilment is that it is a function of the system
UCS., which knows no other aim than wish-fulfilment, and which has at its disposal no
forces other than the wish-impulses. Now if we want to continue for a single moment
longer to maintain our right to develop such far-reaching psychological speculations from
the facts of dream-interpretation, we are in duty bound to show that they insert the dream
into a context which can also embrace other psychic structures. If there exists a system of
the UCS. -- or something sufficiently analogous for the purposes of our discussion -- the
dream cannot be its sole manifestation; every dream may be a wish-fulfilment, but there
must be other forms of abnormal wish-fulfilment as well as dreams. And in fact the
theory of all psychoneurotic symptoms culminates in the one proposition that they, too,
must be conceived as wish-fulfilments of the unconscious.7 Our explanation makes the
dream only the first member of a series of the greatest importance for the psychiatrist, the
understanding of which means the solution of the purely psychological part of the
psychiatric problem.8 But in other members of this group of wish-fulfilments -- for
example, in the hysterical symptoms -- I know of one essential characteristic which I
have so far failed to find in the dream. Thus, from the investigations often alluded to in
this treatise, I know that the formation of a hysterical symptom needs a junction of both
the currents of our psychic life. The symptom is not merely the expression of a realised
unconscious wish; the latter must be joined by another wish from the preconscious, which
is fulfilled by the same symptom; so that the symptom is at least doubly determined, once
by each of the conflicting systems. Just as in dreams, there is no limit to further overdetermination.
The determination which does not derive from the UCS. is, as far as I can
see, invariably a thought-stream of reaction against the unconscious wish; for example, a
self-punishment. Hence I can say, quite generally, that a hysterical symptom originates
only where two contrary wish-fulfilments, having their source in different psychic
systems, are able to meet in a single expression.9 Examples would help us but little here,
as nothing but a complete unveiling of the complications in question can carry
conviction. I will therefore content myself with the bare assertion, and will cite one
example, not because it proves anything, but simply as an illustration. The hysterical
vomiting of a female patient proved, on the one hand, to be the fulfilment of an
unconscious fantasy from the years of puberty -- namely, the wish that she might be
continually pregnant, and have a multitude of children; and this was subsequently
supplemented by the wish that she might have them by as many fathers as possible.
Against this immoderate wish there arose a powerful defensive reaction. But as by the
vomiting the patient might have spoilt her figure and her beauty, so that she would no
longer find favour in any man's eyes, the symptom was also in keeping with the punitive
trend of thought, and so, being admissible on both sides, it was allowed to become a
reality. This is the same way of acceding to a wish-fulfilment as the queen of the
Parthians was pleased to adopt in the case of the triumvir Crassus. Believing that he had
undertaken his campaign out of greed for gold, she caused molten gold to be poured into
the throat of the corpse. `Here thou hast what thou hast longed for!'
Of the dream we know as yet only that it expresses a wish-fulfilment of the unconscious;
and apparently the dominant preconscious system permits this fulfilment when it has
compelled the wish to undergo certain distortions. We are, moreover, not in fact in a
position to demonstrate regularly the presence of a train of thought opposed to the dreamwish,
which is realised in the dream as well as its antagonist. Only now and then have we
found in dream-analyses signs of reaction-products as, for instance, my affection for my
friend R. in the `dream of my uncle' (p. 48). But the contribution from the preconscious
which is missing here may be found in another place. The dream can provide expression
for a wish from the UCS. by means of all sorts of distortions, once the dominant system
has withdrawn itself into the wish to sleep, and has realised this wish by producing the
changes of cathexis within the psychic apparatus which are within its power; thereupon
holding on to the wish in question for the whole duration of sleep.10
Now this persistent wish to sleep on the part of the preconscious has a quite general
facilitating effect on the formation of dreams. Let us recall the dream of the father who,
by the gleam of light from the death-chamber, was led to conclude that his child's body
might have caught fire. We have shown that one of the psychic forces decisive in causing
the father to draw this conclusion in the dream instead of allowing himself to be
awakened by the gleam of light was the wish to prolong the life of the child seen in the
dream by one moment. Other wishes originating in the repressed have probably escaped
us, for we are unable to analyse this dream. But as a second source of motive power in
this dream we may add the father's desire to sleep, for, like the life of the child, the
father's sleep is prolonged for a moment by the dream. The underlying motive is: `Let the
dream go on, or I must wake up.' As in this dream, so in all others, the wish to sleep lends
its support to the unconscious wish. On page 35 we cited dreams which were manifestly
dreams of convenience. But in truth all dreams may claim this designation. The efficacy
of the wish to go on sleeping is most easily recognised in the awakening dreams, which
so elaborate the external sensory stimulus that it becomes compatible with the
continuance of sleep; they weave it into a dream in order to rob it of any claims it might
make as a reminder of the outer world. But this wish to go on sleeping must also play its
part in permitting all other dreams, which can only act as disturbers of the state of sleep
from within. `Don't worry; sleep on; it's only a dream', is in many cases the suggestion of
the PCS. to consciousness when the dream gets too bad; and this describes in a quite
general way the attitude of our dominant psychic activity towards dreaming, even though
the thought remains unuttered. I must draw the conclusion that throughout the whole of
our sleep we are just as certain that we are dreaming as we are certain that we are
sleeping. It is imperative to disregard the objection that our consciousness is never
directed to the latter knowledge, and that it is directed to the former knowledge only on
special occasions, when the censorship feels, as it were, taken by surprise. On the
contrary, there are persons in whom the retention at night of the knowledge that they are
sleeping and dreaming becomes quite manifest, and who are thus apparently endowed
with the conscious faculty of guiding their dream-life. Such a dreamer, for example, is
dissatisfied with the turn taken by a dream; he breaks it off without waking, and begins it
afresh, in order to continue it along different lines, just like a popular author who, upon
request, gives a happier ending to his play. Or on another occasion, when the dream
places him in a sexually exciting situation, he thinks in his sleep: `I don't want to continue
this dream and exhaust myself by an emission; I would rather save it for a real situation.'
The Marquis Hervey (Vaschide) declared that he had gained such power over his dreams
that he could accelerate their course at will, and turn them in any direction he wished. It
seems that in him the wish to sleep had accorded a place to another, a preconscious wish,
the wish to observe his dreams and to derive pleasure from them. Sleep is just as
compatible with such a wish-resolve as it is with some proviso as a condition of waking
up (wet-nurse's sleep). We know, too, that in all persons an interest in dreams greatly
increases the number of dreams remembered after waking.
Concerning other observations as to the guidance of dreams, Ferenczi states: `The dream
takes the thought that happens to occupy our psychic life at the moment, and elaborates it
from all sides. It lets any given dream-picture drop when there is a danger that the wish
fulfilment will miscarry, and attempts a new kind of solution, until it finally succeeds in
creating a wish-fulfilment that satisfies in one compromise both-instances of the psychic
life.'
1 They share this character of indestructibility with all other psychic acts that are really
unconscious -- that is, with psychic acts belonging solely to the system Ucs. These paths
are opened once and for all; they never fall into disuse; they conduct the excitationprocess
to discharge as often as they are charged again with unconscious excitation. To
speak metaphorically, they suffer no other form of annihilation than did the shades of the
lower regions in the Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment they drank blood. The
processes depending on the preconscious system are destructible in quite another sense.
The psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on this difference.
2 I have endeavoured to penetrate farther into the relations of the sleeping state and the
conditions of hallucination in my essay, Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of
Dreams. Collected Papers, vol. iv, p. 137 (Metapsychologische Ergänzung zur
Traumlehre. Int. Zeitschr. f. Ps. A. iv, 1916-18, Ges. Schriften, Bd. v. p. 520).
3 Here one may consider the idea of the super-ego which was later recognised by
psychoanalysis.
4 In other words: the introduction of a `test of reality' is recognised as necessary.
5 Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilments of dreams: `Sans fatigue sérieuse, sans être
obligé de recourir à cette lutte opiniâtre et longue qui use et corrode les jouissances
poursuivies.'
6 I have further elaborated this train of thought elsewhere, where I have distinguished the
two principles involved as the pleasure-principle and the reality-principle. `Formulations
regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning', Collected Papers, vol. iv, p. 13
(Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Geschehens in Ges. Schriften,
Bd. v, p. 409).
7 Expressed more exactly: One portion of the symptom corresponds to the unconscious
wish-fulfilment, while the other corresponds to the reaction-formation opposed to it.
8 Hughlings Jackson has expressed himself as follows: `Find out all about dreams, and
you will have found out all about insanity.'
9 cf. my latest formulation of the origin of hysterical symptoms in the treatise on
`Hysterical Fantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality', Collected Papers, vol. ii, p. 51
This forms Chapter X in the English edition of Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other
Psychoneuroses.
10 This idea has been borrowed from the theory of sleep of Liébault, who revived hypnotic
research in modern times (Du Sommeil provoqué, etc., Paris, 1889).