As opposed to this view I have shown that the excessively peculiar “manifest” dream-content can regularly be made comprehensible, and that it is a disfigured and changed transcription of certain correct psychic formations which deserve the name of “latent dream-thoughts.” One gains an understanding of the latter by resolving the manifest dream-content into its component parts without regard for its apparent meaning, and then by following up the threads of associations which emanate from each one of the now isolated elements. These become interwoven and in the end lead to a structure of thoughts, which is not only entirely accurate, but also fits easily into the familiar associations of our psychic processes. During this “analysis” the dream-content loses all of the peculiarities so strange to us; but if the analysis is to be successful, we must firmly cast aside the critical objections which incessantly arise against the reproduction of the individual associations. _The Dream-work_ From the comparison of the remembered manifest dream-content with the latent dream-thoughts thus discovered there arises the conception of “dream-work.” The entire sum of the transforming processes which have changed the latent dream-thought into the manifest dream is called the dream-work. The astonishment which formerly the dream evoked in us is now perceived to be due to the dream-work. The function of the dream-work may be described in the following manner. A structure of thoughts, mostly very complicated, which has been built up during the day and not brought to settlement—a day remnant—clings firmly even during night to the energy which it had assumed—the underlying center of interest—and thus threatens to disturb sleep. This day remnant is transformed into a dream by the dream-work and in this way rendered harmless to sleep. But in order to make possible its employment by the dream-work, this day remnant must be capable of being cast into the form of a wish, a condition that is not difficult to fulfill. The wish emanating from the dream-thoughts forms the first step and later on the nucleus of the dream. Experience gained from analyses—not the theory of the dream—teaches us that with children a fond wish left from the waking state suffices to evoke a dream, which is coherent and senseful, but almost always short, and easily recognizable as a “wish fulfillment.” In the case of adults the universally valid condition for the dream-creating wish seems to be that the latter should appear foreign to conscious thinking, that is, it should be a repressed wish, or that it should supply consciousness with reinforcement from unknown sources. Without the assumption of the unconscious activity in the sense used above, I should be at a loss to develop further the theory of dreams and to explain the material gleaned from experience in dream-analyses. The action of this unconscious wish upon the logical