ABSTRACT
Dream-Censorship is the function which controls the expression of unconscious wishes that press towards consciousness and thereby threaten to wake the sleeper. It is one aspect of the process of censorship which also operates during waking life. Freud saw the censorship as that function of the repressing force which brings about repression, so that he attributed the censorship to different agencies, systems or structures as his ideas developed. The wish to sleep endeavours to draw in all the cathexes sent out by the ego and to establish an absolute narcissism. The dream censorship functions to preserve sleep by controlling the expression of unconscious wishes, and preventing the generation of unpleasant affect. Punishment-dreams, too, are fulfilments of wishes though not of wishes of the instinctual impulses but of those of the critical, censoring and punishing agency in the mind.
