17 October 1959: The Dream. Cogitations

The term, ‘dream’, I shall always use for the phenomena described by Freud under that term. The dream is an emotional experience that is developmentally unsuccessful in that it is an attempt to fulfil the functions which are incompatible; it is in the domain of the reality principle and the pleasure principle, and represents an attempt to satisfy both. That is to say, it is an attempt to achieve frustration evasion and frustration modification and fails in both. In so far as it is an attempt at modification of frustration, it requires an interpretation; as an attempt at frustration evasion, it has failed to satisfy because the wish-fulfilment element in it leaves the personality aware that the wish has not been fulfilled in reality. The dream thus occupies a conspicuous role in treatment; it contains, and is itself a manifestation of, painful stresses. But for this same reason its importance is less central amongst the processes involved in the maintenance of smooth development; the crucial mechanisms are those associated with rendering the perceptions of experience fit for storage in the psyche, namely α, and for making these stored transformations of experience available again when the psyche needs them. The problem is, what are these crucial mechanisms? It may be that we can never know, that we can only postulate their existence in order to explain hypotheses that are capable of translation into empirically verifiable data, and that we shall have to work with these postulates without assuming that corresponding realities will at some time be discovered. I regard α as a postulate of this nature.

One consequence is starvation of the psyche in its supply of reality. There is therefore nothing that can be opposed to phantasy. This is

an additional reason for failure to wake up; there is not enough ‘up’ to wake up to.

Two conditions need differentiation:

1. a feeling that he cannot dream; this is so strong that it inhibits realization that he is dreaming;

2. an