tion is. The dream
has taken it upon itself to bring the liberated excitement of the Unc.
back under the domination of the foreconscious; it thus affords relief
for the excitement of the Unc. and acts as a safety-valve for the
latter, and at the same time it insures the sleep of the foreconscious
at a slight expenditure of the waking state. Like the other psychic
formations of its group, the dream offers itself as a compromise serving
simultaneously both systems by fulfilling both wishes in so far as they
are compatible with each other. A glance at Robert's "elimination
theory," will show that we must agree with this author in his main
point, viz. in the determination of the function of the dream, though we
differ from him in our hypotheses and in our treatment of the dream
process.

The above qualification--in so far as the two wishes are compatible with
each other--contains a suggestion that there may be cases in which the
function of the dream suffers shipwreck. The dream process is in the
first instance admitted as a wish-fulfillment of the unconscious, but if
this tentative wish-fulfillment disturbs the foreconscious to such an
extent that the latter can no longer maintain its rest, the dream then
breaks the compromise and fails to perform the second part of its task.
It is then at once broken off, and replaced by complete wakefulness.
Here, too, it is not really the fault of the dream, if, while ordinarily
the guardian of sleep, it is here compelled to appear as the disturber
of sleep, nor should this cause us to entertain any doubts as to its
efficacy. This is not the only case in the organism in which an
otherwise efficacious arrangement became inefficacious and disturbing as
soon as some element is changed in the conditions of its origin; the
disturbance then serves at least the new purpose of announcing the
change, and calling into play against it the means of adjustment of the
organism. In this connection, I naturally bear in mind the case of the
anxiety dream, and in order not to have the appearance of trying to
exclude this testimony against the theory of wish-fulfillment wherever
I encounter it, I will attempt an explanation of the anxiety dream, at
least offering some suggestions.

That a psychic process developing anxiety may still be a
wish-fulfillment has long ceased to impress us as a contradiction. We
may explain this occurrence by the fact that the wish belongs to one
system (the Unc.), while by t