You are right in all the unessentials. It is true that a dream differs from a slip of the tongue in the matter of its many elements as well as in other points. We must take account of that in our technique. So I suggest to you that we divide the dream up into its various elements, and examine each element separately; then we shall have re-established the analogy with a slip of the tongue. Again, you are right in saying that the dreamer when questioned on the single elements of the dream may reply that he has no ideas about them. There are cases in which we accept this answer, and later I will tell you which these are; curiously enough, they are cases about which we ourselves may have certain definite ideas. But in general, when the dreamer declares that he has no ideas, we shall contradict him, press him to answer, assure him that he must have some idea and—shall find we are right. He will produce an association, any one, it does not matter to us what it is. He will be especially ready with information which we may term historical. He will say: “That is something which happened yesterday” (as in the instance of the two “prosaic” dreams quoted above) or: “That reminds me of something which happened recently,” and in this way we shall come to notice that dreams are much more often connected with impressions of the day before than we thought at first. Finally, with the dream as his starting-point, he will recall events which happened less recently, and at last even some which lie very far back in the past. In regard to the main issue, however, you are wrong. When you think it arbitrary to assume that the first association of the dreamer must give us just what we are looking for, or at any rate lead to it, and further, that the association is much more likely to be quite capricious and to have no connection with what we are looking for, and that it only shows my blind trust in Providence if I expect anything else—then you make a very great mistake. I have already taken the liberty of pointing out to you that there is within you a deeply-rooted belief in psychic freedom and choice, that this belief is quite unscientific, and that it must give ground before the claims of a determinism which governs even mental life. I ask you to have some respect for the _fact_ that that one association, and nothing else, occurs to the dreamer when he is questioned. Nor am I setting up one belief against another. It can be proved that the association thus given is not a matter of choice, not indeterminate, and that it is not unconnected with what we are looking for. Indeed, I have recently learnt—not that I attach too much importance to the fact—that experimental psychology itself has brought forward similar proofs.