Note 159 — Chapter VII

Foucault has pointed this out, and Morton Prince, and Giessler (who admits that the wish-dream is common in children), and Flournoy (who remarks that not only a fear but any emotion can be equally effective), as well as Claparède. The last remarks that Freud might regard a fear as a suppressed desire, but it may equally be said that a desire involves, on its reverse side, a fear. Freud has indeed himself pointed out (e.g. Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen, Bd. 1., 1909, p. 362) that fears may be instinctively combined with wishes; he regards the association with a wish of an opposing fear as one of the components of some morbid psychic states. But he holds that the wish is the positive and fundamental element: 'The unconscious can only wish' ('Das Unbewusste kann nichts als wünschen'), a statement that seems somewhat too metaphysical for the psychologist.