Note 13 — Front matter

The same extreme and unmeasured intensification of every emotion is also a feature of the affective life of children, and it is present as well in dream life. Thanks to the isolation of the single emotions in the unconscious, a slight annoyance during the day will express itself in a dream as a wish for the offending person's death, or a breath of temptation may give the impetus to the portrayal in the dream of a criminal action. Hanns Sachs has made an appropriate remark on this point: 'If we try to discover in consciousness all that the dream has made known to us of its bearing upon the present (upon reality), we need not be surprised that what we saw as a monster under the microscope of analysis now reappears as an infusorium.' (Die Traumdeutung, S. 457. [Translation p. 493.])