a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

antitheses are so closely allied in association and why they occur together in
the unconscious, as we have heard; and that is why punishment, too, is a
wish-fulfillment of the other, the censoring person.
On the whole, then, I have made no concessions to your protestation against
the theory of wish-fulfillment. We are bound, however, to establish wishfulfillment
in every dream no matter how distorted, and we certainly do not
wish to withdraw from this task. Let us go back to the dream, already
interpreted, of the three bad theatre tickets for 1 Fl. 50 Kr. from which we
have already learned so much. I hope you still remember it. A lady who tells
her husband during the day that her friend Elise, only three months younger
than herself, has become engaged, dreams she is in the theatre with her
husband. Half the parquet is empty. Her husband says, "Elise and her fiancé
wanted to go to the theatre, too, but couldn't because they could get only
poor seats, three for one gulden and a half." She was of the opinion that that
wasn't so unfortunate. We discovered that the dream-thought originated in
her discontent at having married too soon, and the fact that she was
dissatisfied with her husband. We may be curious as to the manner in which
these thoughts have been worked over into a wish-fulfillment, and where
their traces may be found in the manifest content. Now we know that the
element "too soon, premature" is eliminated from the dream by the censor.
The empty parquet is a reference to it. The puzzling "three for 1 Fl. 50 Kr." is
now, with the help of symbolism which we have since learned, more
understandable.[36] The "3" really means a husband, and the manifest
element is easy to translate: to buy a husband for her dowry ("I could have
bought one ten times better for my dowry"). The marriage is obviously
replaced by going into the theatre. "Buying the tickets too soon" directly takes
the place of the premature marriage. This substitution is the work of the wishfulfillment.
Our dreamer was not always so dissatisfied with her early
marriage as she was on the day she received news of the engagement of her
friend. At the time she was proud of her marriage and felt herself more
favored than her friend. Naive girls have frequently confided to their friends
after their engagement that soon they, too, will be able to go to all the plays
hitherto forbidden, and see everything. The desire to see plays, the curiosity
that makes its appearance here, was certainly in the beginning directed
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