Regression (n.) is, in Freud's term, the fallback to an earlier infantile gratification when adult satisfaction fails, returning not in its original form but as its bodily accompaniment.
Regression (n.) explains many urinary dreams: the stimulus is often a sexual one that first tried to satisfy itself regressively in the infantile form of urethral erotism.
Regression (n.) is the dream's backward march: excitation flows not toward action but back to the sense-organs, until a thought is seen.
Regression (n.) takes three forms — in place, in time, in form — that are one at bottom: what is older is more primitive and lies nearer to perception.
Regression (n.) undoes the history of thought in a dream: thinking began in images, gained words, and the dream sends it back to images.
Regression (n.) is a retreat to old camps: a migrating people that left strong parties at its stopping places will fall back on them when beaten — and is the likelier to be beaten.
Regression (n.) is the libido going home: frustrated in the present, it falls back on older, pregenital pleasures.
Regression (n.) injures an instinct more than repression does; it is another means of defence, sometimes followed by repression.
Regression (n.) is decisive in obsessional neurosis: the ego's first defensive move throws a feeble genital organization back to the sadistic-anal level.
Regression (n.) is love flowing back, after repression, to where it was once fixed, and the place of fixation chooses the neurosis.
Regression (n.) goes back twice in neurosis: in time, to earlier loves, and in form, to more primitive ways of expressing them.