ABSTRACT
The dream often awakens the patient, who is left shaken up and confused about the manifest content. The representation in post-trauma dreams of the defensive altered states employed by the patient in response to the traumatic experience itself is that obscure aspect of the repetition compulsion under examination here. An unusual manifestation of the repetition compulsion may be observed in the mental life of someone severely traumatised in childhood. In severe dissociative psychopathology, where patients may shift between different levels of consciousness while awake, this mechanism also appears to be operative. One of the major theoretical contributions in Beyond the PleasurePrinciple is based upon Freud's elaboration of Breuer's hypothesis of bound and unbound energy, where the former is quiescent and the latter is free and mobile. In order for the realisation and acceptance of ownership of the mind to occur, it seems crucial to help such a patient realise how it may have operated during such intolerable experiences.
