Dreams. A developmental and longitudinal perspective.

In young children's dreams the infantile wish appears almost undisguised. Freud used this prototypical expression and representation of the infantile wish in a child's dream to bolster his conviction that the infantile wish was at the genetic root of adults' dreams as well. As development proceeds, a child's dream grows in disguise and complexity. This study of one analysand's dreams at age 5, 13, and 20 addresses the complexity from a longitudinal point of view and attempts to track the infantile wish through all of its developmental vicissitudes and disguises.