In view of the great number of ideas which analysis furnishes for each
individual element of the dream content, the chief doubt with many
readers will be whether it is permissible to count everything that
subsequently comes to mind during analysis as a part of the dream
thoughts—to assume, in other words, that all these thoughts have been
active in the sleeping state and have taken part in the formation of the
dream. Is it not more probable that thought connections are developed in
the course of analysis which did not participate in the formation of the
dream? I can meet this doubt only conditionally. It is true, of course,
that particular thought connections first arise only during analysis;
but one may always be sure that such new connections have been
established only between thoughts which have already been connected in
the dream thoughts by other means; the new connections are, so to speak,
corollaries, short circuits, which are made possible by the existence of
other more fundamental means of connection. It must be admitted that the
huge number of trains of thought revealed by analysis have already been
active in the formation of the dream, for if a chain of thoughts has
been worked out, which seems to be without connection with the formation
of the dream, a thought is suddenly encountered which, being represented
in the dream, is indispensable to its interpretation—which nevertheless
is inaccessible except through that chain of thoughts. The reader may
here turn to the dream of the botanical monograph, which is obviously
the result of an astonishing condensation activity, even though I have
not given the analysis of it completely.
But how, then, is the psychic condition during sleep which precedes
dreaming to be imagined? Do all the dream thoughts exist side by side,
or do they occur one after another, or are many simultaneous trains of
thought constructed from different centres, which meet later on? I am of
the opinion that it is not yet necessary to form a plastic conception of
the psychic condition of dream formation. Only let us not forget that we
are concerned with unconscious thought, and that the process may easily
be a different one from that which we perceive in ourselves in
intentional contemplation accompanied by consciousness.
The fact, however, that dream formation is based on a process of
condensation, stands indubitable. How, then, is this condensation
brought about?
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