art company with Freud, whose ideas on dreams
as wish-fulfilments we have been following, in the main. Not that
Freud would OK our account of dreams up to this point. Far from it. It
would seem to him on too superficial a level altogether, dealing as it
does with conscious wishes and with straightforward fulfilments. It
has left out of account the "Unconscious" and its symbolisms. The
Freudian would shake his head at our interpretation of the lightning
dream, and say, "Oh, there is a good deal more in that dream. We
should have to analyze that dream, by letting the dreamer dwell on
each item of it and asking himself what of real personal significance
the stroke of lightning or the scar around the eye suggested to him.
He would never be able by his unaided efforts to find the unconscious
wishes fulfilled in the dream, but under the guidance of the
psychoanalyst, who is a specialist in all matters pertaining to the
Unconscious, he may be brought to realize that his dream is the
symbolic expression of wishes that are unconscious because they have
been suppressed".

The Unconscious, according to Freud, consists of forbidden
wishes--wishes forbidden by the "Censor", which represents the moral
and social standards of the individual and his critical judgment
generally. When the Censor suppresses a wish, it does not peaceably
leave the system but sinks to an unconscious state in which it is
still active and liable to make itself felt in ways that get by the
Censor because they are disguised and symbolic. An abnormal worry
{506} is such a disguise, a queer idea that haunts the nervous person
is another, "hysterical" paralysis or blindness is another.

In normal individuals the dream life is held by Freud to be the chief
outlet for the suppressed wishes; for then the Censor sleeps and "the
mice can play". Even so, they dare not show themselves in their true
shape and color, but disguise themselves in innocent-appearing
symbolism. That lightning may stand for something much more personal.
Let your mind play about that "being knocked down by lightning and
getting up again", and ask yourself what experience of childhood it
calls up.--Well, I remember the last time my father whipped me and I
came through defiant, without breaking down as I always had before on
similar occasions.--Yes, now we are on the track of something. The
lightning symbolizes your father and his authority over you, which as
a child you resented. You were specia