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In [[Freudian ]] [[theory]], the fulfillment of a [[wish ]] is an aspiration, theme, or, one might even say, motor [[principle]], of [[unconscious ]] [[formations ]] like [[dreams]], [[hysterical ]] [[symptoms]], and [[fantasies]]. In these formations an unconscious, [[infantile ]] [[sexual ]] wish is expressed and fulfilled in [[imagination ]] in a more or less disguised way. From this point of view, the fulfillment in question is neither [[total ]] nor definitive, but unique and [[dynamic]].

[[Freud ]] set forth his theory of wish fulfillment in chapter 3 of The [[Interpretation ]] of Dreams (1900a), though he had already mentioned the [[idea ]] in the preceding chapter, "The Method of [[Interpreting ]] Dreams," in connection with his [[dream ]] of [[Irma]]'s injection: "The dream represented a [[particular ]] [[state ]] of affairs as I should have wished [[them ]] to be. Thus its [[content ]] was the fulfilment of a wish and its motive was a wish. When the [[work ]] of interpretation has been completed, we perceive that a dream is the fulfilment of a wish" (1900a, pp. 118-119, 121). In fact, four months before his dream of injecting Irma, in his correspondence with Wilhelm [[Fliess]], Freud first alluded to the general principle of the dream as wish fulfillment. The context was in the account of the "dream of convenience" of "Mr. Pepi" (Rudi Kaufmann, a nephew of Josef [[Breuer]]), who dreamed he was in the hospital so as not to have to wake up in the morning ([[Letter ]] of March 4, 1895, p. 114).

Only interpretation and [[analysis ]] can penetrate the disguise under which a wish-fulfillment is expressed. An unconscious wish is fulfilled in an [[imaginary ]] way and appears to the dreamer in masked [[form]]. [[Dream work ]] transforms the [[latent ]] content of the dream into [[manifest ]] content by means of the [[processes ]] of [[condensation ]] and [[displacement]]. Wish fulfillment is not the [[cause ]] of the dream, but it shapes the intentional [[structure ]] of the dream. Hence the [[need ]] for the work of interpretation. To be fulfilled, the wish, as an [[instinctual ]] intrapsychic force, must effect what Freud, in The [[Interpretation of Dreams ]] (1900a), called "perceptual [[identity]]" (pp. 566-567). The path followed leads from the triggering of an [[internal ]] need to its [[satisfaction ]] in the [[experience ]] of a hallucinated wish-fulfillment.

Thirty years later, in New Introductory Lectures on [[Psycho]]-Analysis (1933a [1932]), Freud reaffirmed that "in every dream an instinctual wish has to be represented as fulfilled. The shutting-off of [[mental ]] [[life ]] from [[reality ]] at night and the [[regression ]] to [[primitive ]] mechanisms which this makes possible enable this wished-for instinctual satisfaction to be experienced in a [[hallucinatory ]] manner" (pp. 18-19).

His study of [[traumatic ]] dreams connected with accident [[neuroses ]] led Freud, in Beyond the [[Pleasure ]] Principle (1920g), to postulate aims of the dream [[other ]] than the fulfillment of an unconscious wish. On the face of it, a dreamer whose dreams regularly culminated in [[anxiety ]] could not be striving to [[satisfy ]] an unconscious wish, yet even "if you [[want ]] to take these latter objections into account, you can say nevertheless that a dream is an attempt at the fulfilment of a wish," Freud wrote (1933a [1932], p. 29). With respect to hysterical symptoms, Freud noted that an unconscious, infantile wish was certainly [[being ]] fulfilled, but so was a [[preconscious ]] wish, so that two opposing wishes, issuing from two different mental [[agencies]], were being fulfilled. As for fantasies or daydreams, "like dreams, they are wish-fulfilments. . . . The wishful [[purpose ]] that is at work in their production has mixed up the [[material ]] of which they are built, has rearranged it and has formed it into a new [[whole]]" (Freud, 1900a, p. 492).

A wish never arises in [[isolation]]; it always encounters other wishes, opposing it in an open structure, so that [[desire ]] is always in the [[process ]] of organizing [[meaning]]. Jacques [[Lacan ]] considered this always-incomplete destiny of desire to be the basis of the [[dialectic ]] between [[demand ]] and [[desire, ]] which for him defined the [[human ]] condition.

See also: Amentia; Anxiety dream; Convenience, dream of; Dream [[screen]]; Experience of satisfaction; [[Fantasy]]; Formations of the unconscious; [[Illusion]]; Interpretation of Dreams, The; [[Nightmare]]; Reverie; [[Transgression]]; Wish, hallucinatory satisfaction of a; Work (as a [[psychoanalytical ]] [[notion]]).[[Bibliography]]