There cannot be the slightest doubt that the wish-dream, in its simple or
what Freud calls its infantile form, represents an extremely common type
of dream.[160] A large number of the dreams of children are concerned with
wishes and their fulfilments. Those dreams of adults which are aroused by
actual organic sensations also tend to fall, though not invariably, into
the same form. Again, we chance to want a thing when we are awake; when
we are asleep we dream we have found it. It may also be said, almost with
certainty, that in some cases our dreams are the fulfilment of unexpressed
and unconscious waking wishes. Even the best people, it is probable, may
occasionally dream of events which represent the fulfilment of wishes they
have never consciously formulated. Archbishop Laud was accustomed to note
down his dreams in his Diary. On one occasion we find him setting down
a disturbing dream, in which he saw the Lord Keeper dead, and 'rotten
already.' A little later we find that Laud is 'much concerned at the
envy and undeserved hatred borne to me by the Lord Keeper.'[161] It is
not difficult to see in the Archbishop's relations to the Lord Keeper an
explanation of his dream.
If, however, wishes, conscious or unconscious, are often fulfilled
in dreams, and if, as we have seen reason to conclude, symbolism is
a fundamental tendency of dreaming activity, it is inevitable that
wish-dreams should sometimes take on a symbolic form. It is thus, for
instance, that I interpret my dream of being in an English cathedral and
seeing on the wall a notice to the effect that at evensong on such a day
the edifice will not be illuminated, in order to avoid attracting moths;
I awake with a slight headache, and the unilluminated cathedral was
the symbol of the coolness and absence of glare which one desires when
suffering from headache.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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