First let us turn to the notion of wish fulfilment. "Wish" is a term to which it is by no means easy to give any very definite significance. We may, if we please, apply the word to any sort of directed tendency. If we do, "wish" indicates a factor entering into absolutely all human reactions that come within the purview of psychology, and certainly not offering itself as material for further analysis. But again we may, if we so choose, apply the term to the definite picturing, or realising in some way, of an end of action, the identifying of that end as the one which will be sought, and the judging that, as far as possible, the end shall now be sought. The "wish" then becomes a very complex factor, far removed from that mere "directed tendency" which is a fundamental determinant in all human behaviour. Moreover "wish" in the complex form certainly ought never to be used for the purpose of psychological analysis as if it were itself a simple factor not calling for explanation.
Ricklin himself never once makes clear what he means by "wish," but it would seem that the psychology of the "wish" is, to the followers of Freud, somewhat as follows. Underlying conditions of all primary human behaviour are bodily appetites or needs; hunger, thirst, and the like. These are, usually by the aid of some form of social co-operation, satisfied, the satisfaction producing a perceptual situation which thus becomes associated with the feeling characterising this particular need. Later the appetite re-awakens, with it come memory pictures of the earlier satisfaction, and the coincidence of the urge of the appetite with the pictures, or remembrance of the former satisfaction brings to birth a wish. Now clearly, in so far as this account is to be accepted, the wish cannot be regarded as a self-explanatory element. And that for two reasons: first the memory pictures, or the remembrances, in whatever form they occur, are as much a part of the wish as is the "directed tendency." But they are the
