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An attempt is made to show that Rivers' belief in the failure of the 'wish-fulfilment' theory of dreams causes unnecessary confusion. Having quoted the terror dream of a two-and-a-half years old child in which a big dog jumps up at her, the author points out that the leaping of the dog is the prelude to a wish-fulfilment, the actual incident of the jumping dog, which was the stimulus for the dream, being followed by conspicuous attention from relatives which had hitherto been lacking. In this case the dog appears in the dream in order to satisfy those wishes connected with the petting the child received from her relatives. If sleep had continued the dream would probably have had a happy ending. On this assumption the author bases his main theory that the terror dream is the statement of a condition of wish-fulfilment and not the fulfilment itself. The reason why simple wish-fulfilment dreams are rare in adults is because the things which stand in the way of wish-fulfilment have acquired 'meaning.' In the exhibitionistic dream the pleasure which should be felt in association with wish-fulfilment is mixed with the unpleasure connected with unsuccessful instinctive activity, the resulting conflict showing itself as 'anxiety.' In referring to post-war dreams an interesting analogy is