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.”

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

[2] Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilment of the dream:  “Sans fatigue serieuse, sans etre oblige de recourir a cette lutte opinatre et longue qui use et corrode les jouissances poursuivies.”

[3] This idea has been borrowed from The Theory of Sleep by Liebault, who revived hypnotic investigation in our days. (Du Sommeil provoque, 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 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