The inner life
Wish Fulfilment
Direct answer
Wish Fulfilment: Wish fulfilment is Freud's thesis that every dream represents a wish as fulfilled, openly in the dreams of children and in disguise in those of adults.
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At a glance
- Also called
- wish fulfillment, wish fulfillment theory of dreams
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Manifest and Latent Content, Dream Interpretation, Day Residue, Continuity Hypothesis
Wish fulfilment is Freud's thesis that every dream represents a wish as fulfilled, openly in the dreams of children and in disguise in those of adults.
A plain educational schematic; it does not diagnose a condition or replace professional care.
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What did Freud mean by wish fulfilment?
A thirsty sleeper dreams of drinking; a child denied an outing dreams of going on it. In adults, he argued, the wishes are often ones the dreamer would disown, so they appear in disguise, and the dream needs interpreting before the wish shows.
He also gave dreams a job: by presenting the wish as satisfied they let sleep continue, which is why he called the dream the guardian of sleep. Anxiety dreams were the obvious difficulty. Freud first explained them as disguise that had failed, and later conceded that the repeated dreams of people who have suffered a trauma do not fit the rule.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Dreams.
What sets Wish Fulfilment apart
The thesis is distinctive for its reach: not that some dreams grant wishes, which nobody doubted, but that all do. Freud defended the claim by moving the wish out of sight, into the latent thoughts, so that an unpleasant dream could still count. Critics have said this makes the claim impossible to refute. He also gave it a physiological purpose, protecting sleep from disturbance, and a founding scene, a summer night at Bellevue near Vienna, which he joked to a friend might one day be marked with a marble tablet.
- German term: Wunscherfüllung
- Founding dream: Irma's injection, 24 July 1895
- Stated function: the dream as guardian of sleep
- Plainest cases: children's dreams and dreams of hunger or thirst
- Admitted exception: traumatic dreams, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920
Often mistaken for something else: Compensation, Jung's rule, says a dream balances a one-sided waking attitude; wish fulfilment says it grants what the dreamer wants.
The story behind Wish Fulfilment
Freud dated the idea to his analysis of his own dream of Irma's injection, dreamt in July 1895, and made it the thesis of The Interpretation of Dreams. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in 1920, he acknowledged the dreams of war neurosis as an exception. Later dream science largely set the thesis aside, though findings that reward systems of the brain are active in dreaming have kept a version of it in discussion.
Why Wish Fulfilment matters
Wish Fulfilment is the most famous single claim ever made about dreams, and most later theories define themselves by where they part from it.
How to read Wish Fulfilment
Readers apply it as one question among several: what, in this dream, is being given to me that waking life withholds?
Wish Fulfilment in practice: an example
On a strict diet, someone dreams of a table laid with bread and cake and wakes annoyed at how simple the dream was.
Where readings of Wish Fulfilment go wrong
As a rule for all dreams it is not supported by research, and reading every dream as a hidden desire can mislead as easily as inform.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- wish fulfillment, wish fulfilment dreams, Freud wish fulfilment, wish fulfillment theory of dreams, dreams as wish fulfilment
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What did Freud mean by wish fulfilment?
That a dream shows a wish as already satisfied. He held this true of all dreams, with the wish plain to see in children's dreams and concealed by the dream work in most adult ones.
How did Freud explain nightmares?
He argued that the wish was a repressed one whose near escape from disguise produced anxiety. In 1920 he accepted that dreams which replay a trauma are a real exception to wish fulfilment.
Is wish fulfilment still accepted?
Not as a general law. Studies of dream content find that most dreams reflect ordinary concerns and that negative feelings outnumber positive ones. Some researchers still see wanting and seeking as a driving force in dreaming.
