exciting situation, he thinks in his sleep: "I do not care to continue
this dream and exhaust myself by a pollution; I prefer to defer it in
favor of a real situation."

[1] They share this character of indestructibility with all psychic acts
that are really unconscious--that is, with psychic acts belonging to the
system of the unconscious only. These paths are constantly open and
never fall into disuse; they conduct the discharge of the exciting
process as often as it becomes endowed with unconscious excitement To
speak metaphorically they suffer the same form of annihilation as the
shades of the lower region in the _Odyssey_, who awoke to new life the
moment they drank blood. The processes depending on the foreconscious
system are destructible in a different way. The psychotherapy of the
neuroses is based on this difference.

[2] Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilment of the dream: "Sans
fatigue sérieuse, sans être obligé de recourir à cette lutte opinâtre et
longue qui use et corrode les jouissances poursuivies."

[3] This idea has been borrowed from _The Theory of Sleep_ by Liébault,
who revived hypnotic investigation in our days. (_Du Sommeil provoqué_,
etc.; Paris, 1889.)




VII

THE FUNCTION OF THE DREAM