as though the historical factors revealed by analysis were but pretexts, seized upon by an inner necessity, when opportunity offered, to serve its purpose. This brings us to the discouraging conclusion that although individual forms of neurotic symptoms can certainly be satisfactorily explained by their relation to the patient’s experiences, yet our science fails us for the far more frequent typical symptoms in the same cases. In addition to this, I have not nearly explained to you all the difficulties that arise during a resolute pursuit of the historical meaning of a symptom. Nor shall I do so; for although my intention is to conceal nothing from you and to gloss over nothing, I do not need to confuse you and stupefy you at the outset of our studies together. It is true that our understanding of symptom-interpretation has only just begun, but we will hold fast to the knowledge gained and proceed to overcome step by step the difficulties of the unknown. I will try to cheer you with the thought that it is hardly possible to presume a fundamental difference between the one kind of symptom and the other. If the individual form of symptom is so unmistakably connected with the patient’s experiences, it is possible that the typical symptom relates to an experience which is itself typical and common to all humanity. Other regularly recurring features of a neurosis, such as the repetition and doubt of the obsessional neurosis, may be universal reactions which the patient is compelled to exaggerate by the nature of the morbid change. In short, there is no reason to give up hastily in despair; let us see what more we can find out. There is a very similar difficulty met with in the theory of dreams, one which I could not deal with in the course of our previous discussions of dreams. The manifest content of dreams is multifarious and highly differentiated individually, and we have shown exhaustively what can be obtained by analysis from this content. But there are also dreams which may in the same way be called _typical_ and occur in everybody, dreams with an identical content, which present the same difficulties to analysis. These are the dreams of falling, flying, floating, swimming, of being hindered, of being naked, and certain other anxiety-dreams; which yield first this, then that, interpretation, according to the person concerned, without any explanation of their monotonous and typical recurrence. But we notice that in these dreams also the common groundwork is embroidered with additions of an individually varying character. Most probably they too will prove to fit in with other knowledge about the dream-life, gained from a study of other kinds of dreams—not by any forcible twist, but by a gradual widening of our comprehension of these things. EIGHTEENTH LECTURE FIXATION UPON TRAUMATA: THE UNCONSCIOUS