III — The Dream Is the Fulfilment of a Wish

When after passing a defile one has reached an eminence where the ways part and where the view opens out broadly in different directions, it is permissible to stop for a moment and to consider where one is to turn next. Something like this happens to us after we have mastered this first dream interpretation. We find ourselves in the open light of a sudden cognition. The dream is not comparable to the irregular sounds of a musical instrument, which, instead of being touched by the hand of the musician, is struck by some outside force; the dream is not senseless, not absurd, does not presuppose that a part of our store of ideas is dormant while another part begins to awaken. It is a psychic phenomenon of full value, and indeed the fulfilment of a wish; it takes its place in the concatenation of the waking psychic actions which are intelligible to us, and it has been built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. But at the very moment when we are inclined to rejoice in this discovery, a crowd of questions overwhelms us. If the dream, according to the interpretation, represents a wish fulfilled, what is the cause of the peculiar and unfamiliar manner in which this fulfilment is expressed? What changes have occurred in the dream thoughts before they are transformed into the manifest dream which we remember upon awaking? In what manner has this transformation taken place?

Whence comes the material which has been worked over into the dream? What causes the peculiarities which we observe in the dream thoughts, for example, that they may contradict one another? (The analogy of the kettle, p. 87). Is the dream capable of teaching us something new about our inner psychic processes, and can its content correct opinions which we have held during the day? I suggest that for the present all these questions be laid aside, and that a single path be pursued. We have found that the dream represents a wish as fulfilled. It will be our next interest to ascertain whether this is a universal characteristic of the dream, or only the accidental content of the dream (“of Irma’s injection”) with which we have begun our analysis, for even if we make up our minds that every dream has a meaning and psychic value, we must nevertheless allow for the possibility that this meaning is not the same in every dream. The first dream we have considered was the fulfilment of a wish; another may turn out to be a realised apprehension; a third may have a reflection as to its content; a fourth may simply reproduce a reminiscence. Are there then other wish dreams; or are there possibly nothing but wish dreams?