A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis · Sigmund Freud
THE DREAM
Dream-work is a process of a very peculiar sort, the like of which has hitherto not been discovered in psychic life. These condensations, displacements, regressive translations of thoughts into pictures, are new discoveries which richly repay our efforts in the field of psychoanalysis. You will realize from the parallel to the dream-work, what connections psychoanalytic studies will reveal with other fields, especially with the development of speech and thought. You can only surmise the further significance of these connections when you hear that the mechanism of the dream structure is the model for the origin of neurotic symptoms. I know too that we cannot as yet estimate the entire contribution that this work has made to psychology. We shall only indicate the new proofs that have been given of the existence of unconscious psychic acts--for such are the latent dream thoughts--and the unexpectedly wide approach to the understanding of the unconscious psychic life that dream interpretation opens up to us. The time has probably come, however, to illustrate separately, by various little examples of dreams, the connected facts for which you have been prepared.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.