Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/272



Condensation and Displacement in the Dream-work

The dream-work, to which I return after this digression, subjects the thought material uttered in the optative mood to a very peculiar elaboration. First of all it proceeds from the optative to the indicative mood; it substitutes “it is” for “would it were!” This “it is” is destined to become part of an hallucinatory representation which I have called the “regression” of the dream-work. This regression represents the path from the mental images to the sensory perceptions of the same, or if one chooses to speak with reference to the still unfamiliar—not to be understood anatomically—topic of the psychic apparatus, it is the region of the thought-formation to the region of the sensory perception. Along this road which runs in an opposite direction to the course of development of psychic complications the dream-thoughts gain in clearness; a plastic situation finally results as a nucleus of the manifest “dream picture.” In order to arrive at such a sensory representation the dream-thoughts have had to experience tangible changes in their expression. But while the thoughts are changed back into mental images they are subjected to still greater changes, some