V THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS
After coming to realise from the analysis of the dream of Irma’s injection that the dream is the fulfilment of a wish, our interest was next directed to ascertaining whether we had thus discovered a universal characteristic of the dream, and for the time being we put aside every other question which may have been aroused in the course of that interpretation. Now that we have reached the goal upon one of these paths, we may turn back and select a new starting-point for our excursions among the problems of the dream, even though we may lose sight for a time of the theme of wish-fulfilment, which has been as yet by no means exhaustively treated.
Now that we are able, by applying our process of interpretation, to discover a latent dream content which far surpasses the manifest dream content in point of significance, we are impelled to take up the individual dream problems afresh, in order to see whether the riddles and contradictions which seemed, when we had only the manifest content, beyond our reach may not be solved for us satisfactorily.
The statements of the authors concerning the relation of the dream to waking life, as well as concerning the source of the dream material, have been given at length in the introductory chapter. We may recall that there are three peculiarities of recollection in the dreams, which have been often remarked but never explained:
1. That the dream distinctly prefers impressions of the few days preceding; (Robert,1 Strümpell,2 Hildebrandt,3 also Weed-Hallam 4).
2. That it makes its selection according to principles other than those of our waking memory, in that it recalls not what is essential and important, but what is subordinate and disregarded (cf. p. 13).
3. That it has at its disposal the earliest impressions of our childhood, and brings to light details from this period of life which again seem trivial to us, and which in waking life were considered long ago forgotten.5
These peculiarities in the selection of the dream material have of course been observed by the authors in connection with the manifest dream content.