Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/132

114 during sleep, there are also dreams of fear, in which this most terrible of all disagreeable sensations tortures us until we awake, and it is with just these dreams of fear that children are so often persecuted (Cf. Debacker concerning the Pavor Nocturnus), though it is in the case of children that you have found dreams of wishing undisguised."

Indeed it is the anxiety dreams which seem to prevent a generalisation of the thesis that the dream is a wish-fulfilment, which we have established by means of the examples in the last section; they seem even to brand this thesis as an absurdity.

It is not difficult, however, to escape these apparently conclusive objections. Please observe that our doctrine does not rest upon an acceptance of the manifest dream content, but has reference to the thought content which is found to lie behind the dream by the process of interpretation. Let us contrast the manifest and the latent dream content. It is true that there are dreams whose content is of the most painful nature. But has anyone ever tried to interpret these dreams, to disclose their latent thought content? If not, the two objections are no longer valid against us; there always remains the possibility that even painful and fearful dreams may be discovered to be wish fulfilments upon interpretation.

In scientific work it is often advantageous, when the solution of one problem presents difficulties, to take up a second problem, just as it is easier to crack two nuts together instead of separately. Accordingly we are confronted not merely with the problem: How can painful and fearful dreams be the fulfilments of wishes? but we may also, from our discussion so far, raise the question: Why do not the dreams which show an indifferent content, but turn out to be wish-fulfilments, show this meaning undisguised? Take the fully reported dream of Irma's injection; it is in no way painful in its nature, and can be recognised, upon interpretation, as a striking wish-fulfilment. Why, in the first place, is an interpretation necessary? Why does not the dream say directly what it means? As a matter of fact, even the dream of Irma's