There is no difficulty in discovering the general function of dreaming. It serves the purpose of warding off, by a kind of soothing action, external or internal stimuli which would tend to arouse the sleeper, and thus of securing sleep against interruption. External stimuli are warded off by being given a new interpretation and by being woven into some harmless situation; internal stimuli, caused by the pressure of instincts, are given free play by the sleeper and allowed to find satisfaction in the formation of dreams, so long as the latent dream-thoughts submit to the control of the censorship. But if they threaten to break free and the meaning of the dream becomes too plain, the sleeper cuts short the dream and awakens in terror. (Dreams of this class are known as _anxiety-dreams_). A similar failure in the function of dreaming occurs if an external stimulus becomes too strong to be warded off. (This is the class of _awakening-dreams_). I have given the name of _dream-work_ to the process which, with the co-operation of the censorship, converts the latent thoughts into the manifest content of the dream. It consists in a peculiar way of treating the preconscious material of thought, so that its component parts become _condensed_, its mental emphasis becomes _displaced_, and the whole of it is translated into visual images or _dramatized_, and filled out by a deceptive secondary elaboration. The dream-work is an excellent example of the processes occurring in the deeper, unconscious layers of the mind, which differ considerably from the familiar normal processes of thought. It also displays a number of archaic characteristics, such as the use of a _symbolism_ (in this case of a predominantly sexual kind) which it has since also been possible to discover in other spheres of mental activity.