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Freud's statement, 'There is no negation in dreams' needs no confirmation. If the dreamer notices somebody's absence in the dream, the very notice focuses attention on the absent person. Nor is attention through denial limited to dream life. When a woman lays undue emphasis on her innocence we say, 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks'. The playful injunction, 'You may think of anything but not of a hippopotamus', makes it impossible to get the hippopotamus out of our mind. In waking life it is the strength of negation that produces this seesaw effect of attention. Without stress, negatives are likely to be accepted at face value. If we ask someone if he was at home yesterday and the answer is 'no', we may give no further thought to the statement. But a stubborn insistence on having been at home will make us suspect that somebody had challenged the fact and the grounds of this challenge might be important.
The stress which compels the waking mind to think of the opposite is always present in the dream mind, but is not necessarily manifest in the dream. The dreaming of the dream is the evidence of the stress. Therefore, a simple negative fulfils the same purpose in the dream as a strong one in waking life.
Further, in waking life the negative may not hold. We may drop it as unthinkable in view of the veracity and integrity of the person in question, or the court may acquit the accused. We cannot establish the truth unless all the pertinent facts are put at our disposal, which is seldom the case. In the dream the unconscious mind is in possession of all the facts. No stranger is unknown to the dream mind, no situation is uncalled for—in the literal sense of this word. The dream is wholly subjective and is enacted for a definite purpose. Nothing can happen in the dream which is contrary to the purpose of the