How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #7
In the first place, what we remember of a dream and what we exercise our interpretative arts upon has been mutilated by the trustworthiness of our memory, which seems quite especially incapable of retaining a dream and may well have lost precisely the most important parts of its context. (7.2.2)
In the final chapter of the book, Freud addresses a concern that many other thinkers have raised about the possibility of interpreting dreams correctly. The doubts expressed in this passage aren't his; they're doubts that he refutes wholeheartedly. In his view, we needn't be concerned about our dreams being "mutilated" by our untrustworthy memories, because even the distortions that our memories produce are significant to the meaning of the dream.
Quote #8
In the unconscious nothing can be brought to an end, nothing is past or forgotten. (7.5.11)
According to Freud, why is it that memories and impressions live on forever in the unconscious? Why don't they fade and disappear like so many other memories and impressions do?
Quote #9
And the value of dreams for giving us knowledge of the future? There is of course no question of that. It would be truer to say instead that they give us knowledge of the past. For dreams are derived from the past in every sense. (7.7.18)
As Freud moves toward the conclusion of The Interpretation of Dreams, he reminds his readers once again that dreams can't reveal the future. Instead, he says, they reveal the past. Because dreams bring to light the wishes and desires of our childhoods, they are windows into our earliest selves.