followers of the Freudian school of psychologists can be believed--and
there are many reasons for believing them--all of us, no matter how
apparently contented we are and how well we are supplied with the good
things of the earth, are "beggars," because at one time or another and
in one way or another we are daily betraying the presence of unfulfilled
wishes. Many of these wishes are of such a character that we ourselves
cannot put them into words. Indeed, if they were put into words for us,
we should straightway deny that such a wish is or was ever harbored by
us in our waking moments. But the stretch of time indicated by "waking
moments" is only a minor part of the twenty-four hours. Even during the
time we are not asleep we are often abstracted, day-dreaming, letting
moments go by in reverie. Only during a limited part of our waking
moments are we keenly and alertly "all there" in the possession of our
faculties. There are thus, even apart from sleep, many unguarded moments
when these so-called "repressed wishes" may show themselves.

In waking moments we wish only for the conventional things which will
not run counter to our social traditions or code of living. But these
open and above-board wishes are not very interesting to the
psychologist. Since they are harmless and call for the kinds of things
that everybody in our circle wishes for, we do not mind admitting them
and talking about them. Open and uncensored wishes are best seen in
children (though children at an early age begin to show repressions).
Only tonight I heard a little girl of nine say: "I wish I were a boy and
were sixteen years old--I'd marry Ann" (her nine-year old companion).
And recently I heard a boy of eight say to his father: "I wish you would
go away forever; then I could marry mother." The spontaneous and
uncensored wishes of children gradually disappear as the children take
on the speech conventions of the adult. But even though the crassness of
the form of expression of the wish disappears with age, there is no
reason to suppose that the human organism ever gets to the point where
wishes just as unconventional as the above do not rise to trouble it.
Such wishes, though, are immediately repressed; we never harbor them nor
do we express them clearly to ourselves in our waking moments.

The steps by which repression takes place in the simpler cases are not
especially difficult to understand. When the child wants something it
ought not to hav