CAS AH 287 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Tit-Bits, Washstand, Paul Bourget

• School: Boston University
• Department: History of Art & Architecture
• Course: CAS AH 287
• Professor: Jonathan Ribner

Document Summary

We are in somewhat the same position after we have mastered this first interpretation of a dream. We find ourselves standing in the light of a sudden discovery. It is a perfectly valid psychic phenomenon, actually a wish-fulfilment; it may be enrolled in the continuity of the intelligible psychic activities of the waking state; it is built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. But at the very moment when we are about to rejoice in this discovery a host of problems besets us. What causes many of the peculiarities which are to be observed in our dream-thoughts; for example, how is it that they are able to contradict one another? (see the analogy of the kettle, p. 32). I suggest that for the present all these problems be laid aside, and that a single path be pursued. We have found that the dream represents a wish as fulfilled.