. 44). There is some evidence in post-Freudian literature of modification of Freud's classic terms; some experts prefer dream transformation to either censorship or distortion (Jones, 1978; Alvarez, 1995).
Dream-related literature, following Freud, routinely makes reference to three states of being: preconscious (Pcs), unconscious (Ucs), and conscious (Cs). In the unconscious processes of the mind, highly complex and critical to the notion of psychoanalysis of neurotic personalities, is identified in general terms as the locus of "the impetus to dream formation" (Freud, 1978, p. 397). Conscious processes of the mind and body, while they may be complex or disturbed are fairly easy to recognize but in Freud's formulation are to be decoded so as to reach meaning. It is the preconscious that is the mediating path through which "dream-excitation" passes (p. 397), but the Pcs is reinforced and informed by the Ucs.
According to Jones, Pcs can be conceptualized either as a storage mechanism for memory and thought that could become Cs (Freud's view), or, secondarily as a transformer of thought, memory, and perceived forms into another form, depending on how Pcs interacts with Ucs and Cs. Freud's dream theory is formulated in functional terms. The purpose of a dream, even a painful dream, 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 has thus made them capable of being dreamed" (p. 411)--and, one could add, only dreamed, for the "sleep ego," a powerful psychological agent, "reacts with violent resentment to the accomplished satisfaction of the repressed wish" by inducing anxiety (Freud, 1978, p. 412). Further to this point, so-called dream work, "bubbling up from the uncons...