is involved if we express this latter empirical proposition in the following formula: The greatest intensity is shown by those elements of the dream for whose formation the most extensive condensation-work was required. We may, therefore, expect that it will be possible to express this condition, as well as the other condition of the wish-fulfilment, in a single formula.

I must utter a warning that the problem which I have just been considering- the causes of the greater or lesser intensity or distinctness of single elements in dreams- is not to be confounded with the other problem- that of variations in the distinctness of whole dreams or sections of dreams. In the former case the opposite of distinctness is haziness; in the latter, confusion. It is, of course, undeniable that in both scales the two kinds of intensities rise and fall in unison. A portion of the dream which seems clear to us usually contains vivid elements; an obscure dream, on the contrary, is composed of less vivid elements. But the problem offered by the scale of definition, which ranges from the apparently clear to the indistinct or confused, is far more complicated than the problem of fluctuations in vividness of the dream-elements. For reasons which will be given later, the former cannot at this stage be further discussed. In isolated cases one observes, not without surprise, that the impression of distinctness or indistinctness produced by a dream has nothing to do with the dream-structure, but proceeds from the dream-material, as one of its ingredients. Thus, for example, I remember a dream which on waking seemed so particularly well-constructed, flawless and clear that I made up my mind, while I was still in a somnolent state, to admit a new category of dreams- those which had not been subject to the mechanism of condensation and distortion, and which might thus be described as phantasies during sleep. A closer examination, however, proved that this unusual dream suffered from the same structural flaws and breaches as exist in all other dreams; so I abandoned the idea of a category of dream-phantasies. * The content of the dream, reduced to its lowest terms, was that I was expounding to a friend a difficult and long- sought theory of bisexuality, and the wish-fulfilling power of the dream was responsible for the fact that this theory (which, by the way, was not communicated in the dream) appeared to be so lucid and flawless. Thus, what I believed to be a judgment as regards the finished dream was a part, and indeed the most essential part, of the dream-content. Here the dream-work reached out, as it were, into my first waking thoughts, and presented to me, in the form of a judgment of the dream, that part of the dream-material which it had failed to represent with precision in the dream. I was once confronted with the exact counterpart of this case by a female patient who at first absolutely declined to relate a dream which was necessary for the analysis "because it was so hazy and confused," and who finally declared, after repeatedly protesting the inaccuracy of her description, that it seemed to her that several persons- herself, her husband, and her father- had occurred in the dream, and that she had not known whether her husband was her father, or who really was her father, or something of that sort. Comparison of this dream with the ideas which occurred to the dreamer in the course of the sitting showed beyond a doubt that it dealt with the rather commonplace story of a maidservant who has to confess that she is expecting a child, and hears doubts expressed as to "who the father really is." *(2) The obscurity manifested by this dream, therefore, was once more a portion of the dream-exciting material. A fragment of this material was represented in the form of the dream. The form of the dream or of dreaming is employed with astonishing frequency to represent the concealed content.

* I do not know today whether I was justified in doing so.

*(2) Accompanying hysterical symptoms; amenorrhoea and profound depression were the chief troubles of this patient.

Glosses on the dream, and seemingly harmless comments on it, often serve in the most subtle manner to conceal- although, of course, they really betray- a part of what is dreamed. As, for example, when the dreamer says: Here the dream was wiped out, and the analysis gives an infantile reminiscence of listening to someone cleaning himself after defecation. Or another example, which deserves to be recorded in detail: A young man has a very distinct dream, reminding him of phantasies of his boyhood which have remained conscious. He found himself in a hotel at a seasonal resort; it was night; he mistook the number of his room, and entered a room in which an elderly lady and her two daughters were undressing to go to bed. He continues: "Then there are some gaps in the dream; something is missing; and at the