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Although the wish is a concept that is often used in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and within academic psychology, it is a difficult and elusive concept to define, leading to its marginalization in research. Scientific conceptualizations of “wish,” “wishing,” and “wish fulfillment” are scarce. Starting with contextualizing the topic of the wish and its development in psychological research, the aim of this paper is to stress wish-related mental activity as an effective regulation of a person’s well-being. We will elaborate this central thesis by (a) focusing on the cause, function and effect of wishing and mental wish fulfillment while a person is awake (as opposed to dreaming, which has been a focus of scientific research) and (b) by connecting psychoanalytic concepts of the wish and wish fulfillment with research findings and theories derived from the neurosciences. Motivational psychologists consider wishes to mark beginnings of intention building and planning processes, psychoanalysts think of them as hedonically regulative, and in the neurosciences the wish occurs along with reward, “wanting” and “SEEKING” processes, whereas wish fulfillment is linked with “LUST” and “liking.” In this regard, we explore certain activities of the SEEKING system as a possible neuropsychoanalytic substrate of wishing. We suggest a broadening of the research field into wish-lead mental activity, from nightly dreams, to the processes of hedonic regulation that take place in everyday life in the form of daydreaming, joyful anticipation, and narrative embedment of experiences, for example.