[3] Freud relates the story of a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition and the three arguments he offers.
Though the three arguments are inconsistent, Freud notes that it is so much the better, as if even one is found to be true then the man must be acquitted.
The kettle "logic" of the dream-work is related to what Freud calls the embarrassment-dream of being naked, in which contradictory opposites are yoked together in the dream.
[...] The suppressed psychic material, which in the waking state has been prevented from expression and cut off from internal perception by the mutual neutralization of contradictory attitudes [durch die gegensätzliche Erledigung der Widersprüche], finds ways and means, under the sway of compromise-formations, of obtruding itself on consciousness during the night.
*(2) At any rate, the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious element in out psychic life.