Through his analysis of dreams, Freud examines different dimensions of the human psyche, with special reference to the psychic processes that are involved in the generation and expression of thoughts. Repression being a recurrent theme in his discussion of dreams, he examines the connection between the repression of thoughts and the formation of dreams. In Freud’s discussion, repression emerges as the main factor that enables certain kinds of dreams and defines the nature/intensity of the gap between the latent and manifest contents of dreams created by displacement. The present paper first explores Freud’s conception of repression in relation to the connection between repression and dreams and then examines the role repression plays as the prime determiner of the nature of the gap between the latent thoughts that provide the basis for a dream and their actual representation/manifestation in the dream.
Freud’s discussion projects dreams as spaces in which repressed thoughts find expression. According to Freud, repression is the psychological condition in which certain thoughts fail to reach one’s consciousness as a result of a psychological mechanism/function called ‘censorship’, which acts as a filter that allows only those thoughts that it considers agreeable to enter the consciousness.[1] In this sense, censorship functions as a gate-keeper that polices the gap between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind of a person. The state of sleep marks “a relaxation of this censorship”[2], as a result of which the repressed thoughts of the mind gain access to the consciousness. Once they come to the conscious mind, “the repressed material must submit to certain alterations which mitigate its offensive features.”[3] The four processes that Freud recognizes as condensation, displacement, pictorial rearrangement, and the formation of a connected whole (dream composition)[4] account for these alterations that the repressed latent material undergoes when it is transformed into new representations[5], which then find expression in dreams. Of the three types of dreams[6] that Freud discusses, repression is associated with the second and third types. In a context where Freud regards dreams as fulfilments of wishes, these two types of dreams are “disguised fulfilments of repressed wishes.”[7] In such a context, the connection between repression and dreams goes beyond one in which the latter simply provides space for the expression of the former to one in which the latter (at least the second and third types of dreams) is a necessary consequence of the former. This supports the claim that the main factor that enables the second and third types of dreams is repression.
Although Freud’s discussion of repression gives the idea that repression is a single psychological condition, two forms/manifestations of this psychological condition are discernible in the discussion. These two forms/manifestations can be understood in relation to the moments at which repression occurs and results in defining the nature of the gap between the latent and manifest content of a dream. The first form of repression occurs at a moment prior to the state of sleep, while the second occurs at a particular moment during the state of sleep. The first moment concerns repression as an agent of alienation. Freud’s discussion of the uncanny implies that repression entails alienation as its necessary consequence.[8] Alienation results in the transformation of what is familiar and old-fashioned into an unfamiliar reality that is alien to the conscious mind. This transformation points to repression as the agent of alienation. This alienation effected by repression takes place prior to the beginning of the dream-work of a particular dream. As a result of this repression-cum-alienation, what are expressed, especially in the case of the second and third types of dreams, are the repressed, therefore alienated, thoughts that have been relegated to the unconscious mind. Therefore, the latent thoughts that submit themselves to certain alterations in the process of dream-work are already alienated thoughts. In such a dream, what reaches the conscious mind of an individual in the form of the manifest content of the dream is twice removed[9] from the actual thought/experience that the dream is based on. The second moment at which repression plays a significant role is during the state of sleep. In this state, the relaxation of censorship enables the repressed thought stored in the unconscious mind to “make a path for itself to consciousness”[10]; however, due to the fact that censorship is not completely inactive and that it exerts some control over the thought that is trying to reach the conscious mind even in the state of sleep, what eventually reaches consciousness is not the latent thought, but a ‘compromise’ determined by the struggle between the psychical force of the latent thought that attempts to push the thought from the unconscious mind to consciousness and the counter force of the partially-active censorship that attempts to stifle the thought.[11] In that sense, the compromise that gains access to consciousness in the state of sleep is a result of a form of repression that takes place in the state of sleep itself.
Although repression, at least the one that takes place in the state of sleep, looks identical to the process of displacement, which is one of the four processes that characterize dream-work, there is a subtle and significant difference between the two. Freud regards displacement as “nothing less than the essential portion of the dream-work.”[12] He defines displacement as the process that generates the difference between the dream-thought and the dream-content.[13] In order to create a difference between the dream-thought and the dream-content, displacement should be capable of representing the elements of the dream-thought in new and unfamiliar ways. These new representations embody a distorted version of the latent dream-thought.[14] In this sense, what displacement is doing to the dream-thought is similar to what repression, the one that takes place in the state of sleep, does to the dream-thought. Therefore, displacement and repression appear to be similar, even identical, processes. However, Freud’s discussion of the three types of dreams points to the subtle difference that exists between the two. Although all dreams are wish-fulfilments, Freud makes a clear distinction between the first category of dreams and the other two types of dreams, and this distinction is based on the degree of intelligibility and meaningfulness of the dream-content.[15] According to Freud’s understanding of dreams, displacement, along with the other three processes of dream-work, carries out its responsibilities in producing dreams irrespective of which of the two broad categories the product belongs to. If displacement takes place in both intelligible and unintelligible/meaningful and meaningless dreams, displacement alone cannot account for the variation in the degrees of intelligibility and meaningfulness that different dreams embody. Given that repression characterizes not those dreams whose meaning is clear, but those other dreams whose meaning is obscure and confused, repression can be considered the force that decides the degree of intelligibility and meaningfulness of a dream. In this sense, this form of repression is a process that takes place within the context of dream-displacement, and that is what determines the extent to which a dream-thought gets ‘displaced’ from its original form. The intensity of repression is directly proportional to the extent to which a dream-thought gets displaced.
Thus, both forms of repression play important roles in the construction of dreams. While the first form of repression determines the nature of the repressed latent thought, which gets expressed in the second and third types of dreams, the second form of repression determines the nature of the gap between the latent thought and its eventual manifestation. In this sense, the removal of repression from the equation cancels out the condition of possibility for dreams other than those in which the connection between the latent thought/dream-thought and the manifest thought/dream-content is not clear. This fact points to repression as the force that brings variability to dreams in terms of intelligibility and meaningfulness.
[1] Freud, “On Dreams” 166.
[2] Ibid. 166.
[3] Ibid. 166.
[4] Ibid. 161.
[5] “I shall describe the process which transforms the latent into the manifest content of dreams as the ‘dream-work’.” (Freud, “On Dreams” 148)
[6] The first group of dreams are those that “can be inserted without further difficulty into the context of our mental life. ... A second group is formed by those dreams which, though they are connected in themselves and have a clear sense, nevertheless have a bewildering effect, because we cannot see how to fit that sense into our mental life. ... The third group, finally, contains those dreams which are without either sense or intelligibility, which seem disconnected, confused and meaningless.” (Freud, “On Dreams” 148-149)
[7] Freud, “On Dreams” 165.
[8] “[F]or this uncanny in reality is nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.” (Freud, “The Uncanny” 944)
[9] While the latent thought marks the first form of alienation, the dream-content marks the second form of alienation.
[10] Freud, “On Dreams” 166.
[11] “Our hypothesis is that in our mental apparatus there are two thought-constructing agencies, of which the second enjoys the privilege of having free access to consciousness for its products, whereas the activity of the first is in itself unconscious and can only reach consciousness by way of the second. ... What becomes conscious in such cases is a compromise between the intentions of one agency and the demands of the other.” (Freud, “On Dreams” 165-166)
[12] Freud, “From The Interpretation of Dreams” 925.
[13] “It thus seems plausible to suppose that in the dream-work a psychical force is operating which on the one hand strips the elements which have a high psychical value of their intensity, and on the other hand, by means of overdetermination, creates from elements of low psychical value new values, which afterward find their way into the dream-content. If that is so, a transference and displacement of psychical intensities occurs in the formation of dream-formation.” (Freud, “From The Interpretation of Dreams” 925)
[14] “The consequence of the displacement is that the dream-content no longer resembles the core of the dream-thoughts and that the dream gives no more than a distortion of the dream-wish which exists in the unconscious.” (Freud, “From The Interpretation of Dreams” 925)
[15] “In the case of dreams which are intelligible and have a meaning, we have found that they are undisguised wish fulfilments; that is that in their case the dream-situation represents as fulfilled a wish which is known to consciousness, which is left over from daytime life, and which is deservedly of interest. Analysis has taught us something entirely analogous in the case of obscure and confused dreams: once again the dream-situation represents a wish as fulfilled – a wish which invariably arises from the dream-thoughts, but one which is represented in an unrecognizable form and can only be explained when it has been traced back in analysis. The wish in such cases is either itself a repressed one and alien to consciousness, or it is intimately connected with repressed thoughts and is based upon them.” (Freud, “On Dreams” 165)
Freud’s discussion projects dreams as spaces in which repressed thoughts find expression. According to Freud, repression is the psychological condition in which certain thoughts fail to reach one’s consciousness as a result of a psychological mechanism/function called ‘censorship’, which acts as a filter that allows only those thoughts that it considers agreeable to enter the consciousness.[1] In this sense, censorship functions as a gate-keeper that polices the gap between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind of a person. The state of sleep marks “a relaxation of this censorship”[2], as a result of which the repressed thoughts of the mind gain access to the consciousness. Once they come to the conscious mind, “the repressed material must submit to certain alterations which mitigate its offensive features.”[3] The four processes that Freud recognizes as condensation, displacement, pictorial rearrangement, and the formation of a connected whole (dream composition)[4] account for these alterations that the repressed latent material undergoes when it is transformed into new representations[5], which then find expression in dreams. Of the three types of dreams[6] that Freud discusses, repression is associated with the second and third types. In a context where Freud regards dreams as fulfilments of wishes, these two types of dreams are “disguised fulfilments of repressed wishes.”[7] In such a context, the connection between repression and dreams goes beyond one in which the latter simply provides space for the expression of the former to one in which the latter (at least the second and third types of dreams) is a necessary consequence of the former. This supports the claim that the main factor that enables the second and third types of dreams is repression.
Although Freud’s discussion of repression gives the idea that repression is a single psychological condition, two forms/manifestations of this psychological condition are discernible in the discussion. These two forms/manifestations can be understood in relation to the moments at which repression occurs and results in defining the nature of the gap between the latent and manifest content of a dream. The first form of repression occurs at a moment prior to the state of sleep, while the second occurs at a particular moment during the state of sleep. The first moment concerns repression as an agent of alienation. Freud’s discussion of the uncanny implies that repression entails alienation as its necessary consequence.[8] Alienation results in the transformation of what is familiar and old-fashioned into an unfamiliar reality that is alien to the conscious mind. This transformation points to repression as the agent of alienation. This alienation effected by repression takes place prior to the beginning of the dream-work of a particular dream. As a result of this repression-cum-alienation, what are expressed, especially in the case of the second and third types of dreams, are the repressed, therefore alienated, thoughts that have been relegated to the unconscious mind. Therefore, the latent thoughts that submit themselves to certain alterations in the process of dream-work are already alienated thoughts. In such a dream, what reaches the conscious mind of an individual in the form of the manifest content of the dream is twice removed[9] from the actual thought/experience that the dream is based on. The second moment at which repression plays a significant role is during the state of sleep. In this state, the relaxation of censorship enables the repressed thought stored in the unconscious mind to “make a path for itself to consciousness”[10]; however, due to the fact that censorship is not completely inactive and that it exerts some control over the thought that is trying to reach the conscious mind even in the state of sleep, what eventually reaches consciousness is not the latent thought, but a ‘compromise’ determined by the struggle between the psychical force of the latent thought that attempts to push the thought from the unconscious mind to consciousness and the counter force of the partially-active censorship that attempts to stifle the thought.[11] In that sense, the compromise that gains access to consciousness in the state of sleep is a result of a form of repression that takes place in the state of sleep itself.
Although repression, at least the one that takes place in the state of sleep, looks identical to the process of displacement, which is one of the four processes that characterize dream-work, there is a subtle and significant difference between the two. Freud regards displacement as “nothing less than the essential portion of the dream-work.”[12] He defines displacement as the process that generates the difference between the dream-thought and the dream-content.[13] In order to create a difference between the dream-thought and the dream-content, displacement should be capable of representing the elements of the dream-thought in new and unfamiliar ways. These new representations embody a distorted version of the latent dream-thought.[14] In this sense, what displacement is doing to the dream-thought is similar to what repression, the one that takes place in the state of sleep, does to the dream-thought. Therefore, displacement and repression appear to be similar, even identical, processes. However, Freud’s discussion of the three types of dreams points to the subtle difference that exists between the two. Although all dreams are wish-fulfilments, Freud makes a clear distinction between the first category of dreams and the other two types of dreams, and this distinction is based on the degree of intelligibility and meaningfulness of the dream-content.[15] According to Freud’s understanding of dreams, displacement, along with the other three processes of dream-work, carries out its responsibilities in producing dreams irrespective of which of the two broad categories the product belongs to. If displacement takes place in both intelligible and unintelligible/meaningful and meaningless dreams, displacement alone cannot account for the variation in the degrees of intelligibility and meaningfulness that different dreams embody. Given that repression characterizes not those dreams whose meaning is clear, but those other dreams whose meaning is obscure and confused, repression can be considered the force that decides the degree of intelligibility and meaningfulness of a dream. In this sense, this form of repression is a process that takes place within the context of dream-displacement, and that is what determines the extent to which a dream-thought gets ‘displaced’ from its original form. The intensity of repression is directly proportional to the extent to which a dream-thought gets displaced.
Thus, both forms of repression play important roles in the construction of dreams. While the first form of repression determines the nature of the repressed latent thought, which gets expressed in the second and third types of dreams, the second form of repression determines the nature of the gap between the latent thought and its eventual manifestation. In this sense, the removal of repression from the equation cancels out the condition of possibility for dreams other than those in which the connection between the latent thought/dream-thought and the manifest thought/dream-content is not clear. This fact points to repression as the force that brings variability to dreams in terms of intelligibility and meaningfulness.
[1] Freud, “On Dreams” 166.
[2] Ibid. 166.
[3] Ibid. 166.
[4] Ibid. 161.
[5] “I shall describe the process which transforms the latent into the manifest content of dreams as the ‘dream-work’.” (Freud, “On Dreams” 148)
[6] The first group of dreams are those that “can be inserted without further difficulty into the context of our mental life. ... A second group is formed by those dreams which, though they are connected in themselves and have a clear sense, nevertheless have a bewildering effect, because we cannot see how to fit that sense into our mental life. ... The third group, finally, contains those dreams which are without either sense or intelligibility, which seem disconnected, confused and meaningless.” (Freud, “On Dreams” 148-149)
[7] Freud, “On Dreams” 165.
[8] “[F]or this uncanny in reality is nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.” (Freud, “The Uncanny” 944)
[9] While the latent thought marks the first form of alienation, the dream-content marks the second form of alienation.
[10] Freud, “On Dreams” 166.
[11] “Our hypothesis is that in our mental apparatus there are two thought-constructing agencies, of which the second enjoys the privilege of having free access to consciousness for its products, whereas the activity of the first is in itself unconscious and can only reach consciousness by way of the second. ... What becomes conscious in such cases is a compromise between the intentions of one agency and the demands of the other.” (Freud, “On Dreams” 165-166)
[12] Freud, “From The Interpretation of Dreams” 925.
[13] “It thus seems plausible to suppose that in the dream-work a psychical force is operating which on the one hand strips the elements which have a high psychical value of their intensity, and on the other hand, by means of overdetermination, creates from elements of low psychical value new values, which afterward find their way into the dream-content. If that is so, a transference and displacement of psychical intensities occurs in the formation of dream-formation.” (Freud, “From The Interpretation of Dreams” 925)
[14] “The consequence of the displacement is that the dream-content no longer resembles the core of the dream-thoughts and that the dream gives no more than a distortion of the dream-wish which exists in the unconscious.” (Freud, “From The Interpretation of Dreams” 925)
[15] “In the case of dreams which are intelligible and have a meaning, we have found that they are undisguised wish fulfilments; that is that in their case the dream-situation represents as fulfilled a wish which is known to consciousness, which is left over from daytime life, and which is deservedly of interest. Analysis has taught us something entirely analogous in the case of obscure and confused dreams: once again the dream-situation represents a wish as fulfilled – a wish which invariably arises from the dream-thoughts, but one which is represented in an unrecognizable form and can only be explained when it has been traced back in analysis. The wish in such cases is either itself a repressed one and alien to consciousness, or it is intimately connected with repressed thoughts and is based upon them.” (Freud, “On Dreams” 165)