If, then, in any case a causal relation between an antecedent wish and its dream fulfilment exists, it follows that there must be some link between that wish experienced in the past and the present dream fulfilment, some mode, mechanism, or process by which a past thought, without entering consciousness, can continue to its own fulfilment in a conscious work of the imagination, the dream. I say without entering consciousness because the original specific thought-wish does not appear in the dream consciousness, which is only the fulfilment. The phenomenon as a whole is also inexplicable unless there was some motivating factor or force which determined the form of the dream just as in conscious fabrication and argument “we” consciously motivate and arrange the form of the product. The only logical and intelligible inference is that the original wish, becoming reawakened (by the preceding suggestion) during sleep, continued to function outside of the dream consciousness, as a motivating and directing subconscious process.
But what was the content of this process, and to what extent can its elements be correlated with those of the dream? The experimental data of this dream do not afford an answer to this question. (Those of the observation I shall next give will permit a deeper insight into the character and content of their process.) It is a reasonable inference, however, inasmuch as the different elements of the dream—temple, stones, etc., the material out of which it is constructed—are found to be logical symbolizations of their associative memories, that these memories took part in the subconscious process and consequently may be correlated with their dream-symbols. In other words the content of the subconscious process was more than a wish, or wish neurogram, it included a large complex of memories of diverse experiences that can be recognized through their symbolizations in the dream. This complex, motivated by a particular wish, fabricated the dream, just as in the hallucinations I have cited an underlying process fabricated the hallucination as a symbolic expression of a subconscious judgment, self-reproach, etc. To do this a process that must be termed a subconscious intelligence was required. The dream was an allegory, a product of constructive imagination in the logical form of an argument, and if constructed by an underlying process the latter must have had the same characteristics.[[103]]
This experimental dream confirms therefore the general principle formulated by Freud from the analysis of dreams in which the causal factor is an inferred wish. It is likewise on the assumption of my having correctly inferred this factor that I have insisted that a dream may be a fabricated expression of thoughts other than wishes or may be the solution of an unsolved problem. In this last case the dream phenomena and mechanism seem to be analogous in every way to the subconscious solution of mathematical problems which I have already described. In such and other cases the subconscious process would seem to be a continuation and elaboration of the antecedent suggested problem.
In dreams, then, or, as we should strictly limit ourselves for the present to saying, in certain dreams, there are, as Freud first showed, two processes; one is the conscious dream, the other is a subconscious process which is the actuated residuum of a previous experience and determines the dream.[[104]] It would be going beyond the scope of our subject to enter into a full exposition of this interpretation at this time and I must refer you for a discussion of the dream problem to works devoted to the subject.
We have not, of course, touched the further problem of the How: how a subconscious intelligence induces a conscious dream which is not an emergence of the elements of that intelligence into self-consciousness, but a symbolization of them. This is a problem which still awaits solution. From certain data at hand it seems likely that so far as concerns the hallucinatory perceptual elements of a dream they can be accounted for as the emergence of the secondary images pertaining to the subconscious “ideas.”
The following observation is an example of subconscious versification and also of constructive imagination. It also, I think, gives an insight into the character and content of the underlying process which constructs a dream. I give the observation in the subject’s own words:
"I woke suddenly some time between three and four in the morning. I was perfectly wide awake and conscious of my surroundings but for a short time—perhaps two or three minutes—I could not move, and I saw this vision which I recognized as such.
"The end of my room seemed to have disappeared, and I looked out into boundless space. It looked misty but bright, as if the sun was shining behind a light fog. There were shifting wisps of fog blowing lightly about, and these wisps seemed to gather into the forms of a man and a woman. The figures were perfectly clear and lifelike—I recognized them both. The man was dressed in dark every-day clothes, the woman in rather flowing black; her face was partly hidden on his breast; one arm was laid around his neck; both his arms were around her, and he was looking down at her, smiling very tenderly. They seemed to be surrounded by a sort of rosy atmosphere; a large, very bright star was above their heads—not in the heavens, but just over them; tall rose bushes heavy with red roses in full bloom grew up about them, and the falling petals were heaped up around their feet. Then the man bent his head and kissed her.
"The vision was extraordinarily clear and I thought I would write it down at once. I turned on the light by my bedside, took pencil and paper lying there and wrote, as I supposed, practically what I have written here. I then got up, was up some minutes, went back to bed, and after a while to sleep. The clock struck four soon after getting back into bed. I do not think I experienced any emotion at the moment of seeing the vision, but after writing it down I did.
"The next morning I picked up the paper to read over what I had written and was amazed at the language and the rhythm. This is what I had written: