ABSTRACT
In the history of my attitude towards Freud's theory of the dream, which I gave in the first chapter, I related how a sceptical tendency was overcome by the experience of a dream arising out of a latent desire to be President of a Society. One result of this dream was to make me a temporary convert to the view that the dream expresses the fulfilment of a wish. It was not long, however, before I had other dreams which fitted less easily with this formula, and I was led by them to the view that instead of the dream being always the fulfilment of a wish, it might be the expression of any other affective state. At this time it seemed to me probable that dreams were so often the expression of desire, because desire is so frequent and so prominent among our affective states. Other experiences, and especially the occurrence of dreams referable to anxiety, which not only came into my own experience but were still more prominent in the minds of my patients, led me to the view that dreams might be the expression of any affective state of which the dreamer had been the subject during the preceding day.
