constrained by regard for
this _dramatization of the dream content_.

Around the psychical stuff of dream thoughts there are ever found
reminiscences of impressions, not infrequently of early
childhood--scenes which, as a rule, have been visually grasped. Whenever
possible, this portion of the dream ideas exercises a definite influence
upon the modelling of the dream content; it works like a center of
crystallization, by attracting and rearranging the stuff of the dream
thoughts. The scene of the dream is not infrequently nothing but a
modified repetition, complicated by interpolations of events that have
left such an impression; the dream but very seldom reproduces accurate
and unmixed reproductions of real scenes.

The dream content does not, however, consist exclusively of scenes, but
it also includes scattered fragments of visual images, conversations,
and even bits of unchanged thoughts. It will be perhaps to the point if
we instance in the briefest way the means of dramatization which are at
the disposal of the dream work for the repetition of the dream thoughts
in the peculiar language of the dream.

The dream thoughts which we learn from the analysis exhibit themselves
as a psychical complex of the most complicated superstructure. Their
parts stand in the most diverse relationship to each other; they form
backgrounds and foregrounds, stipulations, digressions, illustrations,
demonstrations, and protestations. It may be said to be almost the rule
that one train of thought is followed by its contradictory. No feature
known to our reason whilst awake is absent. If a dream is to grow out of
all this, the psychical matter is submitted to a pressure which
condenses it extremely, to an inner shrinking and displacement, creating
at the same time fresh surfaces, to a selective interweaving among the
constituents best adapted for the construction of these scenes. Having
regard to the origin of this stuff, the term _regression_ can be fairly
applied to this process. The logical chains which hitherto held the
psychical stuff together become lost in this transformation to the dream
content. The dream work takes on, as it were, only the essential content
of the dream thoughts for elaboration. It is left to analysis to restore
the connection which the dream work has destroyed.

The dream's means of expression must therefore be regarded as meager in
comparison with those of our imagination, though the dream does not
renoun