When the ego has fully developed, Dream work ('In the case of adults the universally valid condition for the dream-creating wish seems to be that the latter should appear foreign to conscious thinking'…e.g. 'Dream work') kicks in, in other words the ego is fighting off the id impulses/wishes so the id sneakily alters, twists and changes the images for its impulses in order to get past the egos, critical factor or Gate watchman! A common occurrence during analysis is that a person's ego resists change; thinking that it's doing a good job it holds back these childhood desires/repressions, usually happening around session 4. (This is called resistance).
So how do dreams occur in adulthood? At nighttime as we sleep are ego relaxes (not totally disappearing though) and there is access through are superego (which is partly unconscious and partly conscious). Our Id as said before has all these desires and thoughts from childhood that are crying out to get into the Ego's awareness and get satisfied. The Id's desires being pushed into conscious awareness in dreams are similar to Freud's metaphor, of the day's residue being the 'entrepreneur' i.e. an unresolved argument stimulating the dream and then the Id acting like 'capital' for the 'entrepreneur' E.g. the 'capital' or unconscious desires are the real power/drive behind the dream.
So what are nightmares or anxious dreams, how could they be wish-fulfilment? The very fact we have nightmares is proof that they are 'wish fulfilment', our ego as said before has to deal with the real world (conscious reality) … it believes it has to keep the Id's unconscious desire from coming to conscious light, so if it figures out the Id has sneaked a desire through dream work into consciousness It rebuts this, gets furious and basically punishes the mind with a nightmare.
When we wake we often find that the most important part of the dream (it's capital) is partly or totally forgotten. The ego having done what it believes is a good job.
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