Freud compares repression to a form of censorship. The thought is formulated based upon experience, memory, and feeling. It passes through censorship and what is left behind is repressed. Dreams limit the mind’s ability to censor everything that is repressed, and small pieces make it through. Sleeping creates a compromising state in which the psychologist and the patient can examine the condensation and displacement to obtain a meaningful interpretation. Freud suggests that one of the reasons humans forget dreams or parts of dreams is that these parts hold the key to the meaning of the dream and are representative of what would ordinarily be repressed.

Freud speaks about dreams and the unconscious mind as if they have agency. In his work, Freud describes a process by which dreams make intentional choices about condensing information and concealing individual components through the process of censorship. In this way, Repression and the Unconscious hold profound power over what is made available to the conscious mind.

The act of sleeping dismantles many of the guards of the unconscious mind, allowing pieces of repressed desires to filter through via