ABSTRACT
Dreams are instigated by day residues, but an imperceptible preconscious wish during the day may succeed in giving rise to a dream only if it allies itself with an unconscious wish. Psychoanalysis approaches unconscious depths from the surface downward, one layer at a time. With respect to formal aspects of unconscious activity, the part of a dream that has a peculiar sensory intensity is the point of direct wish-fulfillment in the dream. The undisturbed organism in primary narcissistic balance need not be aware of itself. The paradigm of the first really serious and repeated disturbance of this balance is the biological imbalance that produces the experience of hunger. A biological alteration corresponding with the psychological concept of "memory trace" is now present. The hallucinatory experience of recathecting is the structural change produced by a formerly real event. In the adult, if the regressive memory cathexis becomes real goal again, with its original sensory vividness and a conviction of its reality.
