Note 12 — Front matter

In the interpretation of dreams, to which, indeed, we owe our best knowledge of unconscious mental life, we follow a technical rule of disregarding doubt and uncertainty in the narrative of the dream, and of treating every element of the manifest dream as being quite certain. We attribute doubt and uncertainty to the influence of the censorship to which the dream-work is subjected, and we assume that the primary dream-thoughts are not acquainted with doubt and uncertainty as critical processes. They may naturally be present, like everything else, as part of the content of the day's residue which leads to the dream. (See Die Traumdeutung, 6. Auflage, 1921, S. 386. [The Interpretation of Dreams. Allen and Unwin, 3rd. Edition, 1913, p. 409.])