... sleeping mind to a desire which it is unwilling or unable to satisfy, precisely because of its sleeping state. This response consists in the purely mental enactment of the situation desired, in such a way that the reality beyond the dream remains unaffected. It is in this aspect that the fulfilment and the satisfaction of desires differ for Freud: for although they are both triggered by the subject's wish or desire, satisfaction entails the actual modification of the state of things in reality, whereas the fulfilment brought about by dreams only takes place in the sleeper's mind. But this is a strange notion indeed - why would the mind seek the illusory achievement of its desire? Why should the mind, so to speak, deceive itself by means of an insubstantial dream, instead of trying to attain the object of its desire in reality? In order to answer these questions, we ...

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