1080
VII
We have not yet come to the end of our consideration of the dream-work. In
addition to condensation, displacement and pictorial arrangement of the
psychical material, we are obliged to assign it yet another activity, though this is
not to be found in operation in every dream. I shall not deal exhaustively with this part of the dream-work, and
will therefore merely remark that the easiest way of forming an idea of its
nature is to suppose - though the supposition probably does not meet the facts -
that it only comes into operation after the dream-content has already been constructed. Its function would then
consist in arranging the constituents of the dream in such a way that they form an
approximately connected whole, a dream-composition. In this way the dream is
given a kind of façade (though this does not, it is true, hide its content at
every point), and thus receives a first, preliminary interpretation, which is
supported by interpolations and slight modifications. Incidentally, this revision of
the dream-content is only possible if it is not too punctiliously carried out;
nor does it present us with anything more than a glaring misunderstanding of
the dream-thoughts. Before we start upon the analysis of a dream we have to
clear the ground of this attempt at an interpretation.
The motive for this part of the dream-work is particularly obvious. Considerations of intelligibility are what lead to this final revision of a dream; and this reveals the origin
of the activity. It behaves towards the dream-content lying before it just as
our normal psychical activity behaves in general towards any perceptual content
that may be presented to it. It understands that content on the basis of
certain anticipatory ideas, and arranges it, even at the moment of perceiving it, on
the presupposition of its being intelligible; in so doing it runs a risk of
falsifying it, and in fact, if it cannot bring it into line with anything
familiar, is a prey to the strangest misunderstandings. As is well known, we are
incapable of seeing a series of unfamiliar signs or of hearing a succession of
unknown words, without at once falsifying the perception from considerations of
intelligibility, on the basis of something already known to us.