In the first place we will consider this material from Freud’s point of causality; in other words, we will “interpret” it, to use Freud’s expression. A wish has been left unfulfilled from the day before the dream. In the dream this wish is realised in the symbolical apple scene. But why is this realisation disguised and hidden under a symbolic image instead of being expressed in a distinctly sexual thought? Freud would refer to the unmistakable sense of guilt shown up by the material, and say the morality that has been inculcated in the young man from childhood is bent on repressing such wishes, and to that end brands the natural craving as immoral and reprehensible. The suppressed immoral thought can therefore only achieve expression by means of a symbol. As these thoughts are incompatible with the moral content of the conscious ego, a psychic factor adopted by Freud, called the Censor, prevents this wish from passing undisguised into consciousness.
Reviewing the dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with that of Freud, does not—as I wish to establish explicitly—involve a denial of the dream’s causæ, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material collected around the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the standard by which they are measured is altered. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is this dream’s purpose? What should it effect? These questions are not arbitrary, in as much as they may be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the “why” and “wherefore” may be raised.
It is clear that the material added by the dream to the previous day’s erotic experience, chiefly emphasises the sense of guilt in the erotic act. The same association has already been shown to be operative in another experience of the previous day in the meeting with his casual lady acquaintance, when the feeling of a bad conscience was automatically and inexplicably aroused, as if, in that instance, too, the young man had done something wrong. This experience also plays a part in the dream, which is even intensified by
