ass the censor. Freud calls this disguising or paraphrasing
process the dream disfigurement. The literal is thereby displaced by the
figurative, an allusion intimated through a nebulous atmosphere. Thus, in
the following example, an unconscious death wish is exhibited. In the
examination of a lady's dream it struck me that the motive of a dead child
occurred repeatedly, generally in connection with picnics. During an
analysis the lady observed that when she was a girl the children, her
younger brothers and sisters, were often the obstacles when it was
proposed to have a party or celebration or the like. The association
Kinder (= children) Hinderniss (= obstacle) furnished the key to a
solution of the stereotyped dream motive. As further indications showed,
it concerned the children of a married man whom she loved. The children
prevented the man separating from his wife in order to marry the lady. In
waking life she would not, of course, admit a wish for the death of the
embarrassing children, but in dreams the wish broke through and
represented the secretly wished situation. The children are dead and
nothing now stands in the way of the "party" or the celebration (wedding).
The double sense of the word "party" is noticeable. (In German "eine
Partie machen" means both to go on an excursion and to make a matrimonial
match.) Such puns are readily made use of by dreams, in order to make the
objectionable appear unobjectionable and so to get by the censor.

Psychoanalytic procedure, employed in the interpretation of dreams of any
person can be called a scientifically organized confession that traces out
with infinite patience even to the smallest ramifications, the spiritual
inventory of what was tucked away in the mind of the person undergoing it.
Psychoanalysis is used in medical practice to discover and relieve the
spiritual causes of neurotic phenomena. The patient is induced to tell
more and more, starting from a given point, thereby going into the most
intimate details, and yet we are aware, in the network of outcropping
thoughts and memories, of certain points of connection, which have
dominating significance for the affective life of the person being
studied. Here the path begins to be hard because it leads into the
intimately personal. The secret places of the soul set up a powerful
opposition to the intruder, even without the purposive action of the
patient. Right there are, however, so to speak, the sore spots (path