The main aim of this paper is to attempt to explain dreams of trauma reenactment within the framework of Freud's hypothesis that dreams are wish fulfilments. Freud at first considered such dreams an exception to the rule but later modified this view with the concept that dreams are attempted wish fulfilments.

In this presentation Wisdom begins by broadening the concept of wish fulfilment to include pleasure-need fulfilment and punishment-need fulfilment. He then formulates the hypothesis that trauma dreams express wish fulfilments. The rather complicated formulation runs as follows: the trauma expresses a need for punishment. The pleasure-need is also expressed by the dream if one supposes that the object of hostility is within the dreamer. It is typical of trauma dreams that the ending does not disclose the person who has been destroyed, and trauma dreams thus contain distortion by a condensation of the two objects.