Concept
Censorship
The function that, in Freud's topographical model, bars unconscious wishes and their derivatives from passing into the preconscious and consciousness unless they are disguised. In Die Traumdeutung (1900) the censorship explains the distortion of dreams: like a writer evading a political censor, the dream-work disguises the latent thoughts so that they can pass. Freud also placed a second censorship between preconscious and conscious, and later assigned the function to the ego and the super-ego.
- Broader concept
- Topographical model
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 1
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1900 To explain why dreams are distorted, Freud posits in Die Traumdeutung two psychical forces, one forming the wish and the other exercising a censorship over it, and compares the dream to a political writer who must disguise what he says to get past the censor.