Freud thought he detected a "death wish" in the fantasies of the human body, a desire for equilibrium. Perhaps death is not an unfortunate malfunction of the conceptual machinery, but the result of a "wish." Dreams, according to Dr. Freud, are "wish fulfillments." The dreaming body protects its sleep by dreaming. Desires, that if they were to rise to the level of "consciousness" would wake the body, are fulfilled in the "unconscious" process of dreaming.

During the day we all experience desires which are not socially acceptable; they are forbidden, subject to punishment, and the source of guilt. The forbidden desires are genital and/or agressive. It is these desires that the "dream-work" fulfills, allowing the human body to sleep. The desires that the dream process fulfills are denied desires; the body, when it is consciously awake, denies that it experiences these desires.

The fulfillment of the human body's denied desires, though, does not happen according to the logic of waking consciousness, but rather according to the language of the unconscious body. The phenomena are images, not percepts; the rules of time/space do not apply. In the process of dreaming, the denied wishes are refolded into the unconscious body; the human body unconsciously accepts what it consciously denies.