ABSTRACT
The interpretation of dreams was for thousands of years a special science, a particular cult, whose priests and priestesses often decided the fate of countries and called forth revolutions that changed the history of the world. Some of the dreams of adults and most of those of children are purely wish-fulfilment dreams. Childhood memories make continual and always significant contributions to the creation of dreams. Highly characteristic products of the dream-condensation are the composite formations of persons, objects, and words. Dream condensation stands in close relation to the work of displacement and transvaluation of the dream. Dreams arc given to using ambiguous words and interpretations of all sorts of expressions in concrete or metaphorical senses in order to make abstract conceptions and thoughts capable of presentation and so of inclusion in the dream. It is an important consequence of S. Freud's theory of dreams, that one is always dreaming, so long as one sleeps.
