ABSTRACT
In Freud’s dream theory, inadmissible latent dream contents (i.e., under the ethical, aesthetical, or social profile threatening for the dreamer) are unconsciously disguised and distorted to become unrecognizable and innocuous to the conscious system. This mechanism, which is responsible for the final bizarre aspect of dream, is described as an intrapsychic selective mechanism that operates as a “censor” in analogy with the known Russian political censorship of the time. While, in the topographic theory of mind, this mechanism is attributed to the normal intrapsychic censor (see Chapter Three), in the “structural model” the concept of “censors” and “censorship” is replaced by the “superego”, a sort of special agency existing within the ego, vested with certain important functions such as moral conscience, self-observation, self-evaluation, and formation of ideals. This follows the internalization of parental influence, as well as of the influence of social and cultural impositions (Freud 1914c, 1917e, 1923b, 1924d, 1930a, 1933a).
