according to the sensitiveness of this censure, either to restrain himself from certain particular forms of attack or to speak in allusion instead of direct designations. Or he must disguise his objectionable statement in a garb that seems harmless. He may, for instance, tell of an occurrence between two mandarins in the Orient, while he has the officials of his own country in view. The stricter the domination of the censor, the more extensive becomes the disguise, and often the more humorous the means employed to put the reader back on the track of the real meaning.
The correspondence between the phenomena of the censor and those of dream distortion, which may be traced in detail, justifies us in assuming similar conditions for both. We should then assume in each human being, as the primary cause of dream formation, two psychic forces (streams, systems), of which one constitutes the wish expressed by the dream, while the other acts as a censor upon this dream wish, and by means of this censoring forces a distortion of its expression. The only question is as to the basis of the authority of this second instance[1] by virtue of which it may exercise its censorship. If we remember that the hidden dream thoughts are not conscious before analysis, but that the apparent dream content is remembered as conscious, we easily reach the assumption that admittance to consciousness is the privilege of the second instance. Nothing can reach consciousness from the first system which has not first passed the second instance, and the second instance lets nothing pass without exercising its rights and forcing such alterations upon the candidate for admission to consciousness as are pleasant to itself. We are here forming a very definite conception of the "essence" of consciousness; for us the state of becoming conscious is a particular psychic act, different from and independent of becoming fixed or of being conceived, and consciousness appears to us as an organ of sense, which perceives a content presented from another source. It may be shown that psychopathology cannot possibly dispense with these fundamental assumptions. We may reserve a more thorough examination of these for a later time.
- ↑ The word is here used in the original Latin sense instantia, meaning energy, continuance or persistence in doing. (Translator.)
