Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/324

306 particularly vivid in the dream is probably traceable to such real sensations during sleep. My experience has never confirmed this. It is incorrect to say that those elements of the dream which are the derivatives of impressions occurring in sleep (nervous excitements) are distinguished by their vividness from others which are based on recollections. The factor of reality is of no account in determining the intensity of dream images.

Furthermore, the expectation will be cherished that the sensory intensity (vividness) of individual dream images has a relation to the psychic intensity of the elements corresponding to them in the dream-thoughts. In the latter intensity is identical with psychic value; the most intense elements are in fact the most significant, and these are the central point of the dream. We know, however, that it is just these elements which are usually not accepted in the dream content owing to the censor. But still it might be possible that the elements immediately following these and representing them might show a higher degree of intensity, without, however, for that reason constituting the centre of the dream representation. This expectation is also destroyed by a comparison of the dream and the dream material. The intensity of the elements in the one has nothing to do with the intensity of the elements in the other; a complete "transvaluation of all psychic values" takes place between the dream-material and the dream. The very element which is transient and hazy and which is pushed into the background by more vigorous images is often the single and only element in which may be traced any direct derivative from the subject which entirely dominated the dream-thoughts.

The intensity of the elements of the dream shows itself to be determined in a different manner—that is, by two factors which are independent of each other. It is easy to see at the outset that those elements by means of which the wishfulfilment is expressed are most distinctly represented. But then analysis also teaches us that from the most vivid elements of the dream, the greatest number of trains of thought start, and that the most vivid are at the same time those which are best determined. No change of sense is involved if we express the latter empirical thesis in the following form: the greatest