anything from this state of affairs, it will at most prove that the most complex mental operations are possible without the cooeperation 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 attention, which seems to be extended only in a definite quantity, and which may have been withdrawn from the stream of thought in Question by other aims.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 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stream of thought has received no such occupation, and from a “suppressed” or “rejected” one this occupation has been withdrawn; both have thus been left to their own emotions.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.

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