ich has also been appropriately described as 'depth-psychology'" (Freud, 2000). Conscious processes of the mind and body, while they may be complex or disturbed, are fairly easy to recognize and can be decoded and explained. The Pcs is the mediating path through which "dream-excitation" passes (p. 397). But both Pcs and Cs are reinforced and informed by the Ucs (p. 410). Pcs, Ucs, and Cs are also in tension, in Freud's formulation, because of the unacknowledged content of the Ucs. That tension is connected to the interpenetration of (and tension between) ego, id, and superego.
Freud's dream theory, which is explained in functional terms, is developed in a way that leads to his personality theory. The purpose of a dream, even a painful one, is gratification of (forbidden) infantile wishes "whose fulfillment could only be felt as painful by the dreamer's [Cs] ego" (Freud, 1978, p. 411). Freud explains this assertion as the fact that the wish "has seized the opportunity offered by the continued cathexis of painful day-residues, has lent them support, and ha
...