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Freud says,
It is easy to see how the remarkable preference shown by the memory in dreams for indifferent, and consequently unnoticed, elements in waking experience is bound to lead people to overlook in general the dependence of dreams upon waking life and all events to make it difficult in any particular instance to prove that dependence. [Interpretation of Dreams, 1900a, p. 19]
My belief is that the dependence of waking life on dreams has been overlooked and is even more important. Waking life = ego activity, and in particular the play of logical thought on the synthesis of elements, i.e. particles characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position. The function of the dream is to render these elements suitable for storage, and so to constitute the contents of what we call memory. Waking life = ego activity = logical operation. This in turn is essential for synthesis and communicability or public-ation.
“The way in which memory behaves in dreams is undoubtedly of the greatest importance for any theory of memory in general” [Interpretation of Dreams, 1900a, p. 20]. In my idea above, the dream symbolization and dream-work is what makes memory possible.