The authors performed (with certain additions) the classic experiment of Poetzl recently repeated by Fisher. Subjects were exposed to a picture for 1/50 of a second and asked to report next morning any dream of that night. The authors attempt to explain why elements often appear in the dream that are not consciously perceived or remembered after the subject's initial exposure to the picture. Because of the short exposure, the perceptual elements remain 'charged'. (Only a more prolonged exposure would 'divest' the elements of their charged personal meaning, and put them in the secondary process so that they could be consciously recalled.) That these elements may then appear in the dream suggests to the authors that the ego may 'use the least conscious layers of the personality to re-establish the all-important bond with reality'.