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

dream. We know only that we have struck a new problem. We wish to know
not only what it is that the dream says, but when, as in our examples, the
dream speaks plainly, we also wish to know why and wherefore this recent
experience is repeated in the dream.
I believe you are as tired as I am of continuing attempts like these. We see,
after all, that the greatest interest in a problem is inadequate if one does not
know a path which will lead to a solution. Up to this point we have not found
this path. Experimental psychology gave us nothing but a few very valuable
pieces of information concerning the meaning of stimuli as dream incitors. We
need expect nothing from philosophy except that lately it has taken haughtily
to pointing out to us the intellectual inferiority of our object. Let us not apply
to the occult sciences for help. History and popular tradition tell us that the
dream is meaningful and significant; it sees into the future. Yet that is hard to
accept and surely not demonstrable. Thus our first efforts end in entire
helplessness.
Unexpectedly we get a hint from a quarter toward which we have not yet
looked. Colloquial usage—which after all is not an accidental thing but the
remnant of ancient knowledge, though it should not be made use of without
caution—our speech, that is to say, recognizes something which curiously
enough it calls "day dreaming." Day dreams are phantasies. They are very
common phenomena, again observable in the normal as well as in the sick,
and access to their study is open to everyone in his own person. The most
conspicuous feature about these phantastic productions is that they have
received the name "day dreams," for they share neither of the two common
elements of dreams. Their name contradicts the relation to the sleeping
condition, and as regards the second common element, one does not
experience or hallucinate anything, one only imagines it. One knows that it is
a phantasy, that one is not seeing but thinking the thing. These day dreams
appear in the period before puberty, often as early as the last years of
childhood, continue into the years of maturity, are then either given up or
retained through life. The content of these phantasies is dominated by very
transparent motives. They are scenes and events in which the egoistic,
ambitious and power-seeking desires of the individual find satisfaction. With
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