Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/330

312 ''of an Inferno with its hellish modes of punishment. I see a colleague strapped on to one apparatus who has every reason to be concerned about me; but he takes no notice of me. Then I am given to understand that I may now go. Then I cannot find my hat, and cannot go after all.''

The wish which the dream fulfils is obviously that I may be acknowledged to be an honest man, and may go; all kinds of subject-matter containing a contradiction of this idea must therefore be present in the dream-thoughts. The fact that I may go is the sign of my absolution; if, then, the dream furnishes at its close an event which prevents me from going, we may readily conclude that the suppressed subject-matter of the contradiction asserts itself in this feature. The circumstance that I cannot find my hat therefore means: "You are not an honest man after all." Failure to accomplish in the dream is the expression of a contradiction, a "No"; and therefore the earlier assertion, to the effect that the dream is not capable of expressing a negation, must be revised accordingly.

In other dreams which involve failure to accomplish a thing not only as a situation but also as a sensation, the same contradiction is more emphatically expressed in the form of a volition, to which a counter volition opposes itself. Thus the sensation of impeded motion represents a conflict of will. We shall hear later that this very motor paralysis belongs to the fundamental conditions of the psychic process in dreaming. Now the impulse which is transferred to motor channels is nothing else than the will, and the fact that we are sure to find this impulse impeded in the dream makes the whole process extraordinarily well suited to represent volition and the "No" which opposes itself thereto. From my explanation of anxiety,