The past in every sense

And the value of dreams for giving us knowledge of the future? ...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. Nevertheless the ancient belief that dreams foretell the future is not wholly devoid of truth. By picturing our wishes as fulfilled, dreams are after all leading us into the future. But this future, which the dreamer pictures as the present, has been moulded by his indestructible wish into a perfect likeness of the past.

Chapter VI: The Dream-Work, F. The Unconscious and Consciousness in The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900, Sigmund Freud, James Strachey translation