REGRESSION

Now that we have defended ourselves against the objections raised, or have at least
indicated our weapons of defence, we must no longer delay entering upon the
psychological investigations for which we have so long been preparing. Let us summarise
the main results of our recent investigations: The dream is a psychic act full of import; its
motive power is invariably a wish craving fulfilment; the fact that it is unrecognisable as
a wish, and its many peculiarities and absurdities, are due to the influence of the psychic
censorship to which it has been subjected during its formation. Besides the necessity of
evading the censorship, the following factors have played a part in its formation: first, a
need for condensing the psychic material; second, regard for representability in sensory
images; and third (though not constantly), regard for a rational and intelligible exterior of
the dream-structure. From each of these propositions a path leads onward to
psychological postulates and assumptions. Thus, the reciprocal relation of the wishmotives,
and the four conditions, as well as the mutual relations of these conditions, must
now be investigated; the dream must be inserted in the context of the psychic life.
At the beginning of this section we cited a certain dream in order that it might remind us
of the problems that are still unsolved. The interpretation of this dream (of the burning
child) presented no difficulties, although in the analytical sense it was not given in full.
We asked ourselves why, after all, it was necessary that the father should dream instead
of waking, and we recognised the wish to represent the child as living as a motive of the
dream. That there was yet another wish operative in the dream we shall be able to show
after further discussion. For the present, however, we may say that for the sake of the
wish-fulfilment the thought-process of sleep was transformed into a dream.
If the wish-fulfilment is cancelled out, only one characteristic remains which
distinguishes the two kinds of psychic events. The dream-thought would have been: `I see
a glimmer coming from the room in which the body is lying. Perhaps a candle has fallen
over, and the child is burning!' The dream reproduces the result of this reflection
unchanged, but represents it in a situation which exists in the present and is perceptible
by the senses like an experience of the waking state. This, however, is the most common
and the most striking psychological characteristic of the dream: a thought, usually the one
wished for, is objectified in the dream, and represented as a scene, or -- as we think --
experienced.
But how are we now to explain this characteristic peculiarity of the dream-work, or -- to
put it more modestly -- how are we to bring it into relation with the psychic processes?
On closer examination, it is plainly evident that the manifest form of the dream is marked
by two characteristics which are almost independent of each other. One is its
representation as a present situation with the omission of `perhaps'; the other is the
translation of the thought into visual images and speech.
The transformation to which the dream-thoughts are subjected because the expectation is
put into the present tense is, perhaps, in this particular dream not so very striking. This is
probably due to the special and really subsidiary role of the wish-fulfilment in this dream.
Let us take another dream, in which the dream-wish does not break away from the
continuation of the waking thoughts in sleep; for example, the dream of Irma's injection.
Here the dream-thought achieving representation is in the conditional: `If only Otto could
be blamed for Irma's illness!' The dream suppresses the conditional, and replaces it by a
simple present tense: `Yes, Otto is to blame for Irma's illness.' This, then, is the first of
the transformations which even the undistorted dream imposes on the dream-thoughts.
But we will not linger over this first peculiarity of the dream. We dispose of it by a
reference to the conscious fantasy, the day-dream, which behaves in a similar fashion
with its conceptual content. When Daudet's M. Joyeuse wanders unemployed through the
streets of Paris while his daughter is led to believe that he has a post and is sitting in his
office, he dreams, in the present tense, of circumstances that might help him to obtain a
recommendation and employment. The dream, then, employs the present tense in the
same manner and with the same right as the day-dream. The present is the tense in which
the wish is represented as fulfilled.
The second quality peculiar to the dream alone, as distinguished from the daydream, is
that the conceptual content is not thought, but is transformed into visual images, to which
we give credence, and which we believe that we experience. Let us add, however, that
not all dreams show this transformation of ideas into visual images. There are dreams
which consist solely of thoughts, but we cannot on that account deny that they are
substantially dreams. My dream `Autodidasker -- the day-fantasy about Professor N.' is
of this character; it is almost as free of visual elements as though I had thought its content
during the day. Moreover, every long dream contains elements which have not undergone
this transformation into the visual, and which are simply thought or known as we are
wont to think or know in our waking state. And we must here reflect that this
transformation of ideas into visual images does not occur in dreams alone, but also in
hallucinations and visions, which may appear spontaneously in health, or as symptoms in
the psychoneuroses. In brief, the relation which we are here investigating is by no means
an exclusive one; the fact remains, however, that this characteristic of the dream,
whenever it occurs, seems to be its most noteworthy characteristic, so that we cannot
think of the dream-life without it. To understand it, however, requires a very exhaustive
discussion.
Among all the observations relating to the theory of dreams to be found in the literature
of the subject, I should like to lay stress upon one as being particularly worthy of
mention. The famous G. T. H. Fechner makes the conjecture,1 in a discussion as to the
nature of the dreams, that the dream is staged elsewhere than in the waking ideation. No
other assumption enables us to comprehend the special peculiarities of the dream-life.
The idea which is thus put before us is one of psychic locality. We shall wholly ignore the
fact that the psychic apparatus concerned is known to us also as an anatomical
preparation, and we shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine the psychic locality
in any anatomical sense. We shall remain on psychological ground, and we shall do no
more than accept the invitation to think of the instrument which serves the psychic
activities much as we think of a compound microscope, a photographic camera, or other
apparatus. The psychic locality, then, corresponds to a place within such an apparatus in
which one of the preliminary phases of the image comes into existence. As is well
known, there are in the microscope and the telescope such ideal localities or planes, in
which no tangible portion of the apparatus is located. I think it superfluous to apologise
for the imperfections of this and all similar figures. These comparisons are designed only
to assist us in our attempt to make intelligible the complication of the psychic
performance by dissecting it and referring the individual performances to the individual
components of the apparatus. So far as I am aware, no attempt has yet been made to
divine the construction of the psychic instrument by means of such dissection. I see no
harm in such an attempt; I think that we should give free rein to our conjectures, provided
we keep our heads and do not mistake the scaffolding for the building. Since for the first
approach to any unknown subject we need the help only of auxiliary ideas, we shall
prefer the crudest and most tangible hypothesis to all others.
Accordingly, we conceive the psychic apparatus as a compound instrument, the
component parts of which we shall call instances, or, for the sake of clearness, systems.
We shall then anticipate that these systems may perhaps maintain a constant partial
orientation to one another, very much as do the different and successive systems of lenses
of a telescope. Strictly speaking, there is no need to assume an actual spatial arrangement
of the psychic system. It will be enough for our purpose if a definite sequence is
established, so that in certain psychic events the system will be traversed by the
excitation in a definite temporal order. This order may be different in the case of other
processes; such a possibility is left open. For the sake of brevity, we shall henceforth
speak of the component parts of the apparatus as `y-systems'.
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the apparatus composed of y-systems has a
direction. All our psychic activities proceed from (inner or outer) stimuli and terminate in
innervations. We thus ascribe to the apparatus a sensory and a motor end; at the sensory
end we find a system which receives the perceptions, and at the motor end another which
opens the sluices of motility. The psychic process generally runs from the perceptive end
to the motor end. The most general scheme of the psychic apparatus has therefore the
following appearance as shown in Fig. 1 on page 379. But this is only in compliance with
the requirement, long familiar to us, that the psychic apparatus must be constructed like a
reflex apparatus. The reflex act remains the type of every psychic activity as well.

We now have reason to admit a first differentiation at the sensory end. The percepts that
come to us leave in our psychic apparatus a trace, which we may call a memory-trace.
The function related to this memory-trace we call `the memory'. If we hold seriously to
our resolution to connect the psychic processes into systems, the memory-trace can
consist only of lasting changes in the elements of the systems. But, as has already been
shown elsewhere, obvious difficulties arise when one and the same system is faithfully to
preserve changes in its elements and still to remain fresh and receptive in respect of new
occasions of change. In accordance with the principle which is directing our attempt, we
shall therefore ascribe these two functions to two different systems. We assume that an
initial system of this apparatus receives the stimuli of perception but retains nothing of
them -- that is, it has no memory; and that behind this there lies a second system, which
transforms the momentary excitation of the first into lasting traces. The following would
then be the diagram of our psychic apparatus:

We know that of the percepts which act upon the P-system, we retain permanently
something else as well as the content itself. Our percepts prove also to be connected with
one another in the memory, and this is especially so if they originally occurred
simultaneously. We call this the fact of association. It is now clear that, if the P-system is
entirely lacking in memory, it certainly cannot preserve traces for the associations; the
individual P-elements would be intolerably hindered in their functioning if a residue of a
former connection should make its influence felt against a new perception. Hence we
must rather assume that the memory-system is the basis of association. The fact of
association, then, consists in this -- that in consequence of a lessening of resistance and a
smoothing of the ways from one of the mem-elements, the excitation transmits itself to a
second rather than to a third mem-element.
On further investigation we find it necessary to assume not one but many such memsystems,
in which the same excitation transmitted by the P-elements undergoes a
diversified fixation. The first of these mem-systems will in any case contain the fixation
of the association through simultaneity, while in those lying farther away the same
material of excitation will be arranged according to other forms of combination; so that
relationships of similarity, etc., might perhaps be represented by these later systems. It
would, of course, be idle to attempt to express in words the psychic significance of such a
system. Its characteristic would lie in the intimacy of its relations to elements of raw
material of memory -- that is (if we wish to hint at a more comprehensive theory) in the
gradations of the conductive resistance on the way to these elements.
An observation of a general nature, which may possibly point to something of
importance, may here be interpolated. The P-system, which possesses no capacity for
preserving changes, and hence no memory, furnishes to consciousness the complexity
and variety of the sensory qualities. Our memories, on the other hand, are unconscious in
themselves; those that are most deeply impressed form no exception. They can be made
conscious, but there is no doubt that they unfold all their activities in the unconscious
state. What we term our character is based, indeed, on the memory-traces of our
impressions, and it is precisely those impressions that have affected us most strongly,
those of our early youth, which hardly ever become conscious. But when memories
become conscious again they show no sensory quality, or a very negligible one in
comparison with the perceptions. If, now, it can be confirmed that for consciousness
memory and quality are mutually exclusive in the y-systems, we have gained a most
promising insight into the determinations of the neuron-excitations.2
What we have so far assumed concerning the composition of the psychic apparatus at the
sensible end has been assumed regardless of dreams and of the psychological
explanations which we have hitherto derived from them. Dreams, however, will serve as
a source of evidence for our knowledge of another part of the apparatus. We have seen
that it was impossible to explain dream-formation unless we ventured to assume two
psychic `instances', one of which subjected the activities of the other to criticism, the
result of which was exclusion from consciousness.
We have concluded that the criticising `instance' maintains closer relations with the
consciousness than the `instance' criticised. It stands between the latter and the
consciousness like a screen. Further, we have found that there is reason to identify the
criticising `instance' with that which directs our waking life and determines our voluntary
conscious activities. If, in accordance with our assumptions, we now replace these
`instances' by systems, the criticising system will therefore be moved to the motor end.
We now enter both systems in our diagram, expressing, by the names given them, their
relation to consciousness.
The last of the systems at the motor end we call the preconscious (Pcs.) to denote that the
exciting processes in this system can reach consciousness without any further detention,
provided certain other conditions are fulfilled, e.g. the attainment of a definite degree of
intensity, a certain apportionment of that function which we must call attention, etc. This
is at the same time the system which holds the keys of voluntary motility. The system
behind it we call the unconscious (Ucs.), because it has no access to consciousness except
through the preconscious, in the passage through which the excitation-process must
submit to certain changes.3
In which of these systems, then, do we localise the impetus to dream-formation? For the
sake of simplicity, let us say in the system Ucs. We shall find, it is true, in subsequent
discussions, that this is not altogether correct; that dream-formation is obliged to make
connection with dream-thoughts which belong to the system of the preconscious. But we
shall learn elsewhere, when we come to deal with the dream-wish, that the motive power
of the dream is furnished by the Ucs., and on account of this factor we shall assume the
unconscious system as the starting-point for dream-formation. This dream-excitation, like
all the other thought-structures, will now strive to continue itself in the Pcs., and thence
to gain admission to the consciousness.
Experience teaches us that the path leading through the preconscious to consciousness is
closed to the dream-thoughts during the day by the resisting censorship. At night they
gain admission to consciousness; the question arises, In what way and because of what
changes? If this admission were rendered possible to the dream-thoughts by the
weakening, during the night, of the resistance watching on the boundary between the
unconscious and the preconscious, we should then have dreams in the material of our
ideas, which would not display the hallucinatory character that interests us at present.
The weakening of the censorship between the two systems, Ucs. and Pcs., can explain to
us only such dreams as the `Autodidasker' dream, but not dreams like that of the burning
child, which -- as will be remembered -- we stated as a problem at the outset in our
present investigations.
What takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can describe in no other way than by
saying that the excitation follows a retrogressive course. It communicates itself not to the
motor end of the apparatus, but to the sensory end, and finally reaches the system of
perception. If we call the direction which the psychic process follows from the
unconscious into the waking state progressive, we may then speak of the dream as having
a regressive character.4
This regression is therefore assuredly one of the most important psychological
peculiarities of the dream-process; but we must not forget that it is not characteristic of
the dream alone. Intentional recollection and other component processes of our normal
thinking likewise necessitate a retrogression in the psychic apparatus from some complex
act of ideation to the raw material of the memory-traces which underlie it. But during the
waking state this turning backwards does not reach beyond the memory-images; it is
incapable of producing the hallucinatory revival of the perceptual images. Why is it
otherwise in dreams? When we spoke of the condensation-work of the dream we could
not avoid the assumption that by the dream-work the intensities adhering to the ideas are
completely transferred from one to another. It is probably this modification of the usual
psychic process which makes possible the cathexis5 of the system of P to its full sensory
vividness in the reverse direction to thinking.
I hope that we are not deluding ourselves as regards the importance of this present
discussion. We have done nothing more than give a name to an inexplicable
phenomenon. We call it regression if the idea in the dream is changed back into the visual
image from which it once originated. But even this step requires justification. Why this
definition if it does not teach us anything new? Well, I believe that the word regression is
of service to us, inasmuch as it connects a fact familiar to us with the scheme of the
psychic apparatus endowed with direction. At this point, and for the first time, we shall
profit by the fact that we have constructed such a scheme. For with the help of this
scheme we shall perceive, without further reflection, another peculiarity of dreamformation.
If we look upon the dream as a process of regression within the hypothetical
psychic apparatus, we have at once an explanation of the empirically proven fact that all
thought-relations of the dream-thoughts are either lost in the dream-work or have
difficulty in achieving expression. According to our scheme, these thought-relations are
contained not in the first mem-systems, but in those lying farther to the front, and in the
regression to the perceptual images they must forfeit expression. In regression the
structure of the dream-thoughts breaks up into its raw material.
But what change renders possible this regression which is impossible during the day? Let
us here be content with an assumption. There must evidently be changes in the cathexis
of the individual systems, causing the latter to become more accessible or inaccessible to
the discharge of the excitation; but in any such apparatus the same effect upon the course
of the excitation might be produced by more than one kind of change. We naturally think
of the sleeping state, and of the many cathectic changes which this evokes at the sensory
end of the apparatus. During the day there is a continuous stream flowing from the y-
system of the P toward the motility end; this current ceases at night, and can no longer
block the flow of the current of excitation in the opposite direction. This would appear to
be that `seclusion from the outer world' which according to the theory of some writers is
supposed to explain the psychological character of the dream. In the explanation of the
regression of the dream we shall, however, have to take into account those other
regressions which occur during morbid waking states. In these other forms of regression
the explanation just given plainly leaves us in the lurch. Regression occurs in spite of the
uninterrupted sensory current in a progressive direction.
The hallucinations of hysteria and paranoia, as well as the visions of mentally normal
persons, I would explain as corresponding, in fact, to regressions, i.e. to thoughts
transformed into images; and would assert that only such thoughts undergo this
transformation as are in intimate connection with suppressed memories, or with
memories which have remained unconscious. As an example I will cite the case of one of
my youngest hysterical patients -- a boy of twelve, who was prevented from falling
asleep by `green faces with red eyes', which terrified him. The source of this
manifestation was the suppressed, but once conscious memory of a boy whom he had
often seen four years earlier, and who offered a warning example of many bad habits,
including masturbation, for which he was now reproaching himself. At that time his
mother had noticed that the complexion of this ill-mannered boy was greenish and that he
had red (i.e. red-rimmed) eyes. Hence his terrifying vision, which merely determined his
recollection of another saying of his mother's, to the effect that such boys become
demented, are unable to learn anything at school, and are doomed to an early death. A
part of this prediction came true in the case of my little patient; he could not get on at
school, and, as appeared from his involuntary associations, he was in terrible dread of the
remainder of the prophecy. However, after a brief period of successful treatment his sleep
was restored, his anxiety removed, and he finished his scholastic year with an excellent
record.
Here I may add the interpretation of a vision described to me by an hysterical woman of
forty, as having occurred when she was in normal health. One morning she opened her
eyes and saw her brother in the room, although she knew him to be confined in an insane
asylum. Her little son was asleep by her side. Lest the child should be frightened on
seeing his uncle, and fall into convulsions, she pulled the sheet over his face. This done,
the phantom disappeared. This apparition was the revision of one of her childish
memories, which, although conscious, was most intimately connected with all the
unconscious material in her mind. Her nurserymaid had told her that her mother, who had
died young (my patient was then only eighteen months old), had suffered from epileptic
or hysterical convulsions, which dated back to a fright caused by her brother (the patient's
uncle) who appeared to her disguised as a spectre with a sheet over his head. The vision
contains the same elements as the reminiscence, viz. the appearance of the brother, the
sheet, the fright, and its effect. These elements, however, are arranged in a fresh context,
and are transferred to other persons. The obvious motive of the vision, and the thought
which it replaced, was her solicitude lest her little son, who bore a striking resemblance
to his uncle, should share the latter's fate.
Both examples here cited are not entirely unrelated to the state of sleep, and may for that
reason be unfitted to afford the evidence for the sake of which I have cited them. I will,
therefore, refer to my analysis of an hallucinatory paranoiac woman patient6 and to the
results of my hitherto unpublished studies on the psychology of the psychoneuroses, in
order to emphasise the fact that in these cases of regressive thought-transformation one
must not overlook the influence of a suppressed memory, or one that has remained
unconscious, this being usually of an infantile character. This memory draws into the
regression, as it were, the thoughts with which it is connected, and which are kept from
expression by the censorship -- that is, into that form of representation in which the
memory itself is psychically existent. And here I may add, as a result of my studies of
hysteria, that if one succeeds in bringing to consciousness infantile scenes (whether they
are recollections or fantasies) they appear as hallucinations, and are divested of this
character only when they are communicated. It is known also that even in persons whose
memories are not otherwise visual, the earliest infantile memories remain vividly visual
until late in life.
If, now, we bear in mind the part played in the dream-thoughts by the infantile
experiences, or by the fantasies based upon them, and recollect how often fragments of
these re-emerge in the dream-content, and how even the dream-wishes often proceed
from them, we cannot deny the probability that in dreams, too, the transformation of
thoughts into visual images may be the result of the attraction exercised by the visually
represented memory, striving for resuscitation, upon the thoughts severed from
consciousness and struggling for expression. Pursuing this conception, we may further
describe the dream as the substitute for the infantile scene modified by transference to
recent material. The infantile scene cannot enforce its own revival, and must therefore be
satisfied to return as a dream.
This reference to the significance of the infantile scenes (or of their fantastic repetitions)
as in a certain degree furnishing the pattern for the dream-content renders superfluous the
assumption made by Scherner and his pupils concerning inner sources of stimuli.
Scherner assumes a state of `visual excitation', of internal excitation in the organ of sight,
when the dreams manifest a special vividness or an extraordinary abundance of visual
elements. We need raise no objection to this assumption; we may perhaps content
ourselves with assuming such a state of excitation only for the psychic perceptive system
of the organ of vision; we shall, however, insist that this state of excitation is a
reanimation by the memory of a former actual visual excitation. I cannot, from my own
experience, give a good example showing such an influence of an infantile memory; my
own dreams are altogether less rich in perceptual elements than I imagine those of others
to be; but in my most beautiful and most vivid dream of late years I can easily trace the
hallucinatory distinctness of the dream-contents to the visual qualities of recently
received impressions. On page 314 I mentioned a dream in which the dark blue of the
water, the brown of the smoke issuing from the ship's funnels, and the sombre brown and
red of the buildings which I saw made a profound and lasting impression upon my mind.
This dream, if any, must be attributed to visual excitation, but what was it that had
brought my organ of vision into this excitable state? It was a recent impression which had
joined itself to a series of former impressions. The colours I beheld were in the first place
those of the toy blocks with which my children had erected a magnificent building for my
admiration, on the day preceding the dream. There was the sombre red on the large
blocks, the blue and brown on the small ones. Joined to these were the colour impressions
of my last journey in Italy: the beautiful blue of the Isonzo and the lagoons, the brown
hue of the Alps. The beautiful colours seen in the dream were but a repetition of those
seen in memory.
Let us summarise what we have learned about this peculiarity of dreams: their power of
recasting their idea-content in visual images. We may not have explained this character of
the dream-work by referring it to the known laws of psychology, but we have singled it
out as pointing to unknown relations, and have given it the name of the regressive
character. Wherever such regression has occurred, we have regarded it as an effect of the
resistance which opposes the progress of thought on its normal way to consciousness, and
of the simultaneous attraction exerted upon it by vivid memories.7 The regression in
dreams is perhaps facilitated by the cessation of the progressive stream flowing from the
sense-organs during the day; for which auxiliary factor there must be some
compensation, in the other forms of regression, by the strengthening of the other
regressive motives. We must also bear in mind that in pathological cases of regression,
just as in dreams, the process of energy transference must be different from that occurring
in the regressions of normal psychic life, since it renders possible a full hallucinatory
cathexis of the perceptive system. What we have described in the analysis of the dreamwork
as `regard for representability' may be referred to the selective attraction of visually
remembered scenes touched by the dream-thoughts.
As to the regression, we may further observe that it plays a no less important part in the
theory of neurotic symptom-formation than in the theory of dreams. We may therefore
distinguish a threefold species of regression: (a) a topical one, in the sense of the scheme
of the y-systems here expounded; (b) a temporal one, in so far as it is a regression to
older psychic formations; and (c) a formal one, when primitive modes of expression and
representation take the place of the customary modes. These three forms of regression
are, however, basically one, and in the majority of cases they coincide, for that which is
older in point of time is at the same time formally primitive and, in the psychic
topography, nearer to the perception-end.
We cannot leave the theme of regression in dreams without giving utterance to an
impression which has already and repeatedly forced itself upon us, and which will return
to us reinforced after a deeper study of the psychoneuroses: namely, that dreaming is on
the whole an act of regression to the earliest relationships of the dreamer, a resuscitation
of his childhood, of the impulses which were then dominant and the modes of expression
which were then available. Behind this childhood of the individual we are then promised
an insight into the phylogenetic childhood, into the evolution of the human race, of which
the development of the individual is only an abridged repetition influenced by the
fortuitous circumstances of life. We begin to suspect that Friedrich Nietzsche was right
when he said that in a dream `there persists a primordial part of humanity which we can
no longer reach by a direct path', and we are encouraged to expect, from the analysis of
dreams, a knowledge of the archaic inheritance of man, a knowledge of psychical things
in him that are innate. It would seem that dreams and neuroses have preserved for us
more of the psychical antiquities than we suspected; so that psychoanalysis may claim a
high rank among those sciences which endeavour to reconstruct the oldest and darkest
phases of the beginnings of mankind.
It is quite possible that we shall not find this first part of our psychological evaluation of
dreams particularly satisfying. We must, however, console ourselves with the thought
that we are, after all, compelled to build out into the dark. If we have not gone altogether
astray, we shall surely reach approximately the same place from another starting-point,
and then, perhaps, we shall be better able to find our bearings.
1 Psychophysik, Part II, p. 520.
2 Since writing this, I have thought that consciousness occurs actually in the locality of the
memory-trace. (cf. Notiz über den Wünderblock, 1925, Ges. Schriften, Bd. vi.)
3 The further elaboration of this linear diagram will have to reckon with the assumption
that the system following the Pcs. represents the one to which we must attribute
consciousness (Cs.), so that P = Cs.
4 The first indication of the element of regression is already encountered in the writings of
Albertus Magnus. According to him the imaginatio constructs the dream out of the
tangible objects which it has retained. The process is the converse of that operating in the
waking state. Hobbes states (Leviathan, 1651): `In sum our dreams are the reverse of our
imagination, the motion, when we are awake, beginning at one end, and when we dream
at another' (quoted by Havelock Ellis, loc. cit., p. 112).
5 [From the Greek kathekho, to occupy, used here in place of the author's term Besetzung,
to signify a charge or investment of energy. -- TRANS.]
6 Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, p. 165, translated by A. A. Brill,
Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Co.
7 In a statement of the theory of repression it should be explained that a thought passes
into repression owing to the co-operation of two of the factors which influence it. On the
one side (the censorship of Cs.) it is pushed, and from the other side (the Ucs.) it is
pulled, much as one is helped to the top of the Great Pyramid. (cf. the Chapter Die
Verdrängung in Ges. Schriften, Bd. v.)