In other dreams in which the inability to do something occurs, not merely as a situation, but also as a sensation, the same contradiction is more emphatically expressed by the sensation of inhibited movement, or a will to which a counter-will is opposed. Thus the sensation of inhibited movement represents a conflict of will. We shall see later on that this very motor paralysis during sleep is one of the fundamental conditions of the psychic process which functions during dreaming. Now an impulse which is conveyed to the motor system is none other than the will, and the fact that we are certain that the impulse will be inhibited in sleep makes the whole process extraordinarily well-adapted to the representation of a will towards something and of a No which opposes itself thereto. From my explanation of anxiety, it is easy to understand why the sensation of the inhibited will is so closely allied to anxiety, and why it is so often connected with it in dreams. Anxiety is a libidinal impulse which emanates from the unconscious and is inhibited by the preconscious. * Therefore, when a sensation of inhibition in the dream is accompanied by anxiety, the dream must be concerned with a volition which was at one time capable of arousing libido; there must be a sexual impulse.
* This theory is not in accordance with more recent views.
As for the judgment which is often expressed during a dream: “Of course, it is only a dream,” and the psychic force to which it may be ascribed, I shall discuss these questions later on. For the present I will merely say that they are intended to depreciate the importance of what is being dreamed. The interesting problem allied to this, as to what is meant if a certain content in the dream is characterized in the dream itself as having been dreamed- the riddle of a dream within a dream- has been solved in a similar sense by W. Stekel, by the analysis of some convincing examples. Here again the part of the dream dreamed is to be depreciated in value and robbed of its reality; that which the dreamer continues to dream after waking from the dream within a dream is what the dream-wish desires to put in place of the obliterated reality. It may therefore be assumed that the part dreamed contains the representation of the reality, the real memory, while, on the other hand, the continued dream contains the representation of what the dreamer merely wishes. The inclusion of a certain content in a dream within a dream is, therefore, equivalent to the wish that what has been characterized as a dream had never occurred. In other words: when a particular incident is represented by the dream-work in a dream, it signifies the strongest confirmation of the reality of this incident, the most emphatic affirmation of it. The dream- work utilizes the dream itself as a form of repudiation, and thereby confirms the theory that a dream is a wish-fulfilment.
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