Wish-Fulfillment

All occurrences

Where it appears in the corpus (30)

1. #01

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   **TOWARD A POETICS OF TERROR FOR THE CULTURE OF THE REAL: OUR DREAM OF CREATIVE READING**

   Theoretical move: Freud surveys the clinical and analogical relations between dream life and mental disturbances, positioning wish-fulfilment as the shared key to a psychological theory of both, and arguing that elucidating the dream is simultaneously an elucidation of the psychosis.

   The above passage from Radestock... reveals with the greatest clearness the wish fulfilment as a characteristic of the imagination, common to the dream and the psychosis. (My own investigations have taught me that here the key to a psychological theory of the dream and of the psychosis is to be found.)

2. #02

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   ***The Analysis of a Sample Dream*** > **ANALYSIS**

   Theoretical move: This passage performs the foundational Freudian move of demonstrating that dream-content is systematically overdetermined wish-fulfillment: through layered free association to each dream element, Freud shows that the manifest dream condenses multiple latent wishes (chiefly exculpation from medical responsibility) and displaces blame onto patients, colleagues, and circumstance, while also illustrating the composite/condensed nature of dream-figures.

   It seems to me, in fact, that I wish to find an error in the diagnosis... But now, in turn, I am disturbed at inventing such serious suffering for Irma for the sole purpose of exculpating myself.

3. #03

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   ***The Analysis of a Sample Dream*** > **ANALYSIS**

   Theoretical move: Through the completed analysis of the "Irma's injection" dream, Freud establishes wish-fulfilment as the fundamental principle of dream-work: the dream's content is shown to be a disguised realisation of the dreamer's wish to be acquitted of responsibility, demonstrating that interpretation reveals latent dream-thoughts condensed behind manifest content.

   When the work of interpretation has been completed the dream may be recognised as the fulfilment of a wish.

4. #04

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   ***The Analysis of a Sample Dream*** > **ANALYSIS**

   Theoretical move: Freud advances the theoretical claim that wish-fulfilment is the universal and essential characteristic of the dream, using a series of simple, transparent dreams (convenience dreams, children's dreams) as empirical proof, while also positing that dreams serve a function of preserving sleep by substituting hallucinatory satisfaction for action.

   The dream is not senseless, not absurd... It is a psychic phenomenon of full value, and indeed the fulfilment of a wish

5. #05

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   ***The Analysis of a Sample Dream*** > **ANALYSIS**

   Theoretical move: Freud argues that dream-disfigurement is produced by a psychic censorship mechanism: a "second instance" suppresses wish-content from the "first instance" by distorting or inverting it before it can reach consciousness, making wish-fulfilment the universal motor of dream formation even where the manifest content is disagreeable.

   disagreeable dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something which is disagreeable to the second instance, but which at the same time fulfils a wish of the first instance. They are wish dreams in the sense that every dream originates in the first instance

6. #06

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   ***The Analysis of a Sample Dream*** > **ANALYSIS**

   Theoretical move: Freud defends the wish-fulfilment theory of dreams against patient objections by introducing hysterical identification as a mechanism whereby an apparently unfulfilled wish in a dream actually fulfils a different (often unconscious) wish, demonstrating that the theory is more nuanced than simple surface-content opposition implies.

   It was thus her wish that I should be in the wrong, and this wish the dream showed her as fulfilled.

7. #07

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   **(B) INFANTILE EXPERIENCES AS THE SOURCE OF DREAMS**

   Theoretical move: Freud argues that childhood impressions and infantile wishes are not merely incidental but structurally constitutive of dream formation, demonstrating through clinical examples and self-analysis that the latent dream-thoughts are anchored in childhood experiences that analysis—not manifest content—reveals.

   the wish itself, which has given rise to the dream, and whose fulfilment the dream turns out to be, has originated in childhood.

8. #08

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   **(B) INFANTILE EXPERIENCES AS THE SOURCE OF DREAMS**

   Theoretical move: Freud argues that infantile experiences are not merely historical residues but remain constitutively active as the latent content of dreams, and that the apparent completion of a dream's interpretation always conceals a deeper stratum reaching back to the earliest childhood wish - suggesting this connection to infantile material may be a structural condition of dreaming itself.

   the dream often appears ambiguous; not only may several wish-fulfilments, as the examples show, be united in it, but one meaning or one wish-fulfilment may also conceal another, until at the bottom one comes upon the fulfilment of a wish from the earliest period of childhood

9. #09

   The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

   **(D) TYPICAL DREAMS**

   Theoretical move: Freud uses the analysis of "typical dreams" (especially nakedness/exhibition dreams) to argue that such dreams are universal because they draw on shared infantile sources—specifically childhood exhibitionism preceding the acquisition of shame—and that the dream-work's distortion through wish-fulfilment and repression explains their characteristic structure, including the contradictory indifference of spectators.

   I think, however, that the latter unpleasant feature has been obviated by the tendency to wish-fulfilment, while the embarrassment, being retained on some account or other, has been left standing

10. #10

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(A) THE CONDENSATION WORK**

    Theoretical move: Through detailed analysis of the dream-word "Autodidasker," Freud demonstrates how condensation operates by compressing multiple names, persons, concerns, and wish-fulfillments into a single verbal formation, and generalizes that dream speech is always derived from remembered speech in the dream material.

    This is exactly my wish; I wish to be in the wrong with my apprehensions—that is to say, I wish that my wife whose fears I have appropriated in the dream thoughts may remain in the wrong.

11. #11

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(C) MEANS OF REPRESENTATION IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: The passage systematically catalogues the dream-work's representational techniques—identification, condensation into composite images, inversion (of content and temporal sequence), and the "transvaluation of psychic values"—demonstrating that the formal properties of dream representation are determined by the logic of the dream-thoughts rather than by the perceptual or sensory qualities of the dreaming state.

    The latter is a wish-fulfilment, which immediately suggests Prague; the wish itself probably originated at a period in my youth when I was imbued with a German nationalistic spirit which is suppressed to-day.

12. #12

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(E) EXAMPLES-ARITHMETIC SPEECHES IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud demonstrates that dream-work does not calculate or compose new speeches but instead recombines fragments from waking life—numerals, words, and speech fragments—to serve the dream's expressive purposes, with over-determination and wish-fulfillment structuring even the most apparently logical dream content; through the "Non vixit" dream, Freud further shows how condensation fuses hostile and friendly trains of thought into a single formation.

    The dream first shows him the fulfilment of a long wished for wish, the rank of inspector.

13. #13

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(F) ABSURD DREAMS—INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCES IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that apparent intellectual performances within dreams—judgments, criticisms, absurdities—are not products of the dream-work itself but belong to the latent dream thoughts, and that the dream-work deploys absurdity as a representational technique to express ridicule or derision, just as a jester uses nonsense to convey forbidden truths.

    But the analysis of the dream teaches me nothing on the subject; it only shows me that the satisfaction belongs to the latent dream content, and not to my judgment upon the dream. It is satisfaction over the fact that I have had children by my marriage.

14. #14

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(F) ABSURD DREAMS—INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCES IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that apparent acts of judgment, inference, and argumentation within dream content are not spontaneous cognitive performances of the dreaming mind but are always traceable to—and borrowed from—the dream thoughts themselves; additionally, he introduces "secondary elaboration" as a fourth factor in dream-formation that imposes a specious coherence on dream material.

    If the subject-matter of these very inferences which I fear will be contested is used by the dream activity for setting up incontestable inferences, this is a performance of the wish-fulfilment.

15. #15

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(F) ABSURD DREAMS—INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCES IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that acts of judgment, astonishment, and explanatory thought appearing within dreams are not independent intellectual performances but are repetitions or displacements of prototypes already present in the dream-thoughts — the dream-work copies reasoning from waking material (including from a patient's neurotic logic) rather than generating it spontaneously.

    The dream seems to say: 'If you must so soon lie in your grave, let it be this Etruscan grave,' and by means of this interpolation it transforms the saddest expectation into one that is really to be desired.

16. #16

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(G) THE AFFECTS IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that dream-work performs two operations on affects: suppression (reducing emotional intensity) and inversion (transforming affects into their opposites), both of which he identifies as products of the dream censor — the restraint of opposing thought-trains upon one another — making censorship's affective dimension structurally parallel to its role in the distortion of ideational content.

    According to the theory of wish-fulfilment this dream could not have happened had not the suppressed, but at the same time pleasurable, train of thought concerning personal aggrandisement been coupled with the opposing thoughts of disgust.

17. #17

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(G) THE AFFECTS IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that dream-affects are not simple transpositions of waking emotions but are overdetermined confluences of multiple affective sources — some censor-approved, others suppressed — whose co-operation or mutual reinforcement explains both the qualitative justification and quantitative excess of neurotic and dream emotions, thereby complicating the wish-fulfilment thesis.

    But how is it possible for the dream to place itself at the service of self-criticism in its conflict with parvenu-pride, and to take as its content a rational warning instead of the fulfilment of a prohibitive wish?

18. #18

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(G) THE AFFECTS IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud demonstrates how a dream's affect is overdetermined by multiple converging chains of thought—a recent anxiety about a friend's illness, childhood rivalries, infantile wishes for the rival's removal, and guilt over betrayed secrets—all funneled through condensation and displacement into a single manifest dream scene, illustrating the mechanisms of the dream-work and the role of the censor in masking infantile sources of satisfaction.

    it gives me the part of the annihilator, an inversion which is obviously the result of the wish-fulfilment.

19. #19

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(H) SECONDARY ELABORATION**

    Theoretical move: Freud distinguishes dream-work from waking thought as qualitatively different rather than merely inferior, articulating its four mechanisms (displacement, condensation, regard for presentability, secondary elaboration), and then uses the "burning child" dream to pivot toward the limits of interpretation and the need for a new psychology of psychic apparatus.

    We also notice that the dream does not lack the wish-fulfilment. The child acts as if living; it warns the father itself... It was for the sake of this wish-fulfilment that the father slept a moment longer.

20. #20

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(C) THE WISH-FULFILMENT**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that the wish-fulfilment theory of dreams requires refinement: in adults, the true dream-inciting wish must be an infantile one rooted in the unconscious, which reinforces and "recruits" preconscious day-remnants; the dream is thus the product of a dynamic alliance between unconscious infantile wishes and conscious/preconscious residues, not of either alone.

    The wish manifested in the dream must be an infantile one. In the adult it originates in the Unc., while in the child… it is an unfulfilled and unrepressed wish from the waking state.

21. #21

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(C) THE WISH-FULFILMENT**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that the unconscious wish supplies the indispensable motive power for dream-formation, while day-remnants function as the vehicle of transference that allows repressed ideas to enter the preconscious; culminating in the claim that dreaming follows a regressive 'primary process' of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment that recapitulates an archaic mode of psychic functioning, with 'thinking' as merely the detoured, secondary-process equivalent of that same hallucinatory wish.

    We call such a feeling a wish; the reappearance of the perception constitutes the wish-fulfilment, and the full revival of the perception by the want excitement constitutes the shortest road to the wish-fulfilment.

22. #22

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(E) THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY PROCESSES—REGRESSION**

    Theoretical move: Freud synthesizes competing theories of dream formation by subordinating them to his unified framework of wish-fulfilment and dream-work, then advances the argument by distinguishing the preconscious stream of thought from the unconscious wish that energizes it—establishing that the most complex mental operations occur without consciousness, and that regression and the primary process are the hallmarks of the dream-work proper.

    That the dream relieves the mind like a valve, and that, according to Robert's assertion, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless through representation in the dream, not only exactly coincides with our theory of the two-fold wish-fulfilment in the dream.

23. #23

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **COMMENTS**

    Theoretical move: This passage is a collection of contemporary and retrospective critical commentaries on Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, offering no original theoretical argument but summarizing and evaluating Freud's core concepts (manifest/latent content, wish-fulfillment, the unconscious) from multiple external perspectives.

    The underlying thought of every dream is the same—an ungratified wish. It is this thought which the dreamer symbolizes and expresses.

24. #24

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.19

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?) > Freud's Three- Pronged Spear

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that Freud's critique of religion operates along three interlocking prongs—wish-fulfillment, superego masochism, and symptomatic compromise-formation—showing how infantile illusion and self-punishing ascesis are not contradictory but complementary modes of controlling helplessness, with Nietzsche's bad conscience serving as a structural precursor to Freud's account of the superego.

    the core claim is brutally simple: 'It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence... but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.'

25. #25

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part18.xhtml_ncx_83"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part18.xhtml_page_0102"></span>***H***

    Theoretical move: This passage (from Evans's introductory dictionary) articulates three interconnected Lacanian theoretical moves: (1) hallucination as the return of the foreclosed Name-of-the-Father in the Real; (2) helplessness (Hilflosigkeit) as grounding both the subject's constitutive dependence on language and the end of analysis as subjective destitution; and (3) hysteria redefined as a clinical structure organised around the question of sexual position and the desire of the Other, distinct from mere symptomatology.

    Freud argues that '[t]he first wishing seems to have been a hallucinatory cathecting of the memory of satisfaction' (Freud, 1900a: SE V, 598).

26. #26

    Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

    <span id="Chapter23.htm_page214"></span>Postmodern Antiques: *Patience (After Sebald)*

    Theoretical move: Fisher uses Christopher Nolan's *Inception* as a cultural-critical lens to argue that the film's real achievement is the diagnosis of a postmodern condition in which identity, memory, and selfhood are irreducible from fiction and self-deception, while simultaneously exposing how the film itself capitulates to the logic of spectacular capitalism and the 'creative industries', replacing the uncanny unconscious with CGI spectacle.

    Yet this ending has more than a suggestion of wish fulfilment fantasy about it, and the suspicion that Cobb might be marooned somewhere in a multi-layered oneirc labyrinth, a psychotic who has mistaken dreams for reality

27. #27

    A Voice and Nothing More · Mladen Dolar · p.81

    The voice and the drive

    Theoretical move: Dolar argues that the voice, as objet petit a, occupies the paradoxical topological intersection of language and the body that belongs to neither, and that this position is what makes the voice the object of the drive rather than of desire — the drive's "aim" (the voice as by-product) is satisfied on the way to the "goal" (meaning), precisely because the voice is a non-dialectical, aphonic remainder that resists signification.

    Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams, pinpointed the dream as the paramount wish-fulfillment, Wunscherfüllung, the satisfaction of desire precisely in what apparently runs counter to signification, but actually accomplishes its course.

28. #28

    A Voice and Nothing More · Mladen Dolar · p.215

    Chapter 6 Freud's Voices

    Theoretical move: This passage is a footnotes/endnotes section for Chapters 6 and 7, but it contains substantive theoretical moves: linking Dream-Work to Wish-Fulfillment, articulating the Drive's mythological status, connecting the fundamental fantasy to the drive, and theorizing the Voice and Objet petit a as the eternally lacking object that circumvents oral satisfaction, while also noting the structural role of the Matheme against phonological structuralism.

    the equally unconscious wish [desire] for the fulfillment of which the content of the dream is given form.

29. #29

    The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.275

    A Play of Props > **Medical Drama**

    Theoretical move: By tracing the German etymology of "prop" (Pfropf: cork, stopper, clot) through the Irma dream's verbal series "*propyl, propyls… propionic acid*," the passage argues that the dream's stuttering, stop-and-go signifier encodes the traumatic dialectic of plugging and unplugging in Emma Eckstein's botched surgery, making the founding dream of psychoanalysis structurally premised on that near-fatal medical catastrophe.

    Just as someone should have stopped Otto from giving injections with a dirty syringe, so also did his rancid bottle of liquor require a stopper, a cork, a Pfropf.

30. #30

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.133

    The Birth of (Hegelian) Concrete Universality out of the Spirit of (Kantian) Antinomies > interlude 1

    Theoretical move: The passage deploys the "parallax view" as a structural principle—no common denominator can resolve the split between incommensurable perspectives (First World/Third World, Milly/Densher/Kate)—and uses this to argue that genuine ethical acts consist not in symbolic reconciliation or hysterical clinging to fantasy, but in a traversal of fantasy that breaks the deadlock from within, as exemplified by Kate's refusal in James and Paul's self-sacrifice in Iñárritu.

    the dream Freud recounts of the father whose child cries out that he is burning. In the Freudian dream, the father wakes up, in order to continue dreaming