the domination of the censorship, the more thorough becomes the disguise, and, often enough, the more ingenious the means employed to put the reader on the track of the actual meaning.

The detailed correspondence between the phenomena of censorship and the phenomena of dream- distortion justifies us in presupposing similar conditions for both. We should then assume that in every human being there exist, as the primary cause of dream-formation, two psychic forces (tendencies or systems), one of which forms the wish expressed by the dream, while the other exercises a censorship over this dream-wish, thereby enforcing on it a distortion. The question is: What is the nature of the authority of this second agency by virtue of which it is able to exercise its censorship? If we remember that the latent dream- thoughts are not conscious before analysis, but that the manifest dream-content emerging from them is

consciously remembered, it is not a far-fetched assumption that admittance to the consciousness is the prerogative of the second agency. Nothing can reach the consciousness from the first system which has not previously passed the second instance; and the second instance lets nothing pass without exercising its rights, and forcing such modifications as are pleasing to itself upon the candidates for admission to consciousness. Here we arrive at a very definite conception of the essence of consciousness; for us the state of becoming conscious is a special psychic act, different from and independent of the process of becoming fixed or represented, and consciousness appears to us as a sensory organ which perceives a content proceeding from another source. It may be shown that psycho-pathology simply cannot dispense with these fundamental assumptions. But we shall reserve for another time a more exhaustive examination of the subject.

If I bear in mind the notion of the two psychic instances and their relation to the consciousness, I find in the sphere of politics a perfectly appropriate analogy to the extraordinary affection which I feel for my friend R, who is so disparaged in the dream-interpretation. I refer to the political life of a State in which the ruler, jealous of his rights, and an active public opinion are in mutual conflict. The people, protesting against the actions of an unpopular official, demand his dismissal. The autocrat, on the other hand, in order to show his contempt for the popular will, may then deliberately confer upon the official some exceptional distinction which otherwise would not have been conferred. Similarly, my second instance, controlling the access to my consciousness, distinguishes my friend R with a rush of extraordinary affection, because the wish- tendencies of the first system, in view of a particular interest on which they are just then intent, would like to disparage him as a simpleton. *

* Such hypocritical dreams are not rare, either with me or with others. While I have been working at a certain scientific problem, I have been visited for several nights, at quite short intervals, by a somewhat confusing dream which has as its content a reconciliation with a friend dropped long ago. After three or four attempts I finally succeeded in grasping the meaning of this dream. It was in the nature of an encouragment to give up the remnant of consideration still surviving for the person in question, to make myself quite free from him, but it hypocritically disguised itself in its antithesis. I have recorded a "hypocritical Oedipus dream" in which the hostile feelings and death-wishes of the dream-thoughts were replaced by manifest tenderness ("Typisches Beispiel eines verkappten Oedipustraumes." Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, Vol. I, No. I-II [1910]). Another class of hypocritical dreams will be recorded in another place (see Chap vi, "The Dream-Work").

We may now perhaps begin to suspect that dream-interpretation is capable of yielding information concerning the structure of our psychic apparatus which we have hitherto vainly expected from philosophy. We shall not, however, follow up this trail, but shall return to our original problem as soon as we have elucidated the problem of dream-distortion. The question arose, how dreams with a disagreeable content can be analysed as wish- fulfillments. We see now that this is possible where a dream- distortion has occurred, when the disagreeable content serves only to disguise the thing wished for. With regard to our assumptions respecting the two psychic instances, we can now also say that disagreeable dreams contain, as a matter of fact, something which is disagreeable to the second instance, but which at the same time fulfills a wish of the first instance. They are wish-dreams in so far as every dream emanates from the first instance,