Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/275

 energy to pass uninhibited from important to insignificant ideas,—a process which in normal conscious thinking can only give the impression of “faulty thinking.”

Transformation into expressive activity, condensation, and displacement are the three great functions which we can ascribe to the dream-work. A fourth, to which too little attention was given in The Interpretation of Dreams, does not come into consideration here for our purpose. In a consistent elucidation of the ideas dealing with the “topic of the psychic apparatus” and “regression,” which alone can lend value to these working hypotheses, an effort would have to be made to determine at what stages of regression the various transformations of the dream-thoughts occur. As yet no serious effort has been made in this direction, but at least we can speak definitely about displacement when we say that it must arise in the thought material while the latter is in the level of the unconscious processes. One will probably have to think of condensation as a process that extends over the entire course up to the outposts of the perceptive region; but in general it suffices to assume that there is a simultaneous activity of all the forces which participate in the formation of dreams. In view of the reserve which one must naturally