A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
It will not be difficult now to come to a better understanding of the
anxiety-dream. We shall make one more observation, then we shall come to
a conclusion to which many things lead. The observation is that the
anxiety dreams often have a content which is entirely free from
distortion and in which the censorship is, so to speak, eluded. The
anxiety dream is ofttimes an undisguised wish-fulfillment, not, to be
sure, of an accepted, but of a discarded wish. The anxiety development
has stepped into the place of the censorship. While one may assert of
the infantile dream that it is the obvious fulfillment of a wish that
has gained admittance, and of the distorted dream that it is the
disguised fulfillment of a suppressed wish, he must say of the anxiety
dream that the only suitable formula is this, that it is the obvious
fulfillment of a suppressed wish. Anxiety is the mark which shows that
the suppressed wish showed itself stronger than the censorship, that it
put through its wish-fulfillment despite the censorship, or was about to
put it through. We understand that what is wish-fulfillment for the
suppressed wish is for us, who are on the side of the dream-censor, only
a painful sensation and a cause for antagonism. The anxiety which
occurs in dreams is, if you wish, anxiety because of the strength of
these otherwise suppressed wishes. Why this antagonism arises in the
form of anxiety cannot be discovered from a study of the dream alone;
one must obviously study anxiety from other sources.
What holds true for the undistorted anxiety dream we may assume to be
true also of those dreams which have undergone partial distortion, and
of the other dreams of aversion whose painful impressions very probably
denote approximations of anxiety. The anxiety dream is usually also a
dream that causes waking; we habitually interrupt sleep before the
suppressed wish of the dream has accomplished its entire fulfillment in
opposition to the censorship. In this case the execution of the dream is
unsuccessful, but this does not change its nature. We have likened the
dream to the night watchman or sleep-defender who wishes to protect our
sleep from being disturbed. The night watchman, too, sometimes wakes the
sleeper when he feels himself too weak to drive away the disturbance or
danger all by himself. Yet we are often able to remain asleep, even when
the dream begins to become suspicious, and begins to assume the form of
anxiety. We say to ourselves in our sleep: "It's only a dream," and we
sleep on.
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