Freud's Concept of the “Censorship”

In a recent publication1 in which I have compared the psychology of dreams with that underlying the rites and customs of savage peoples, I was able to point out several features of rude culture which present a remarkable resemblance to the rôle assigned by Freud to his endopsychic censorship. According to this writer, the unconscious is guarded by an entity, working within the region of the unconscious, upon which it exerts a controlling and selective action. It checks those elements of unconscious experience which by their unpleasant nature would disturb their possessor if they were allowed to reach his consciousness, and if it permit these to pass, sees that they appear in such a guise that their nature will not be recognized.

In sleeping, according to Freud, this censorship allows much to reach the dormant consciousness, but as a rule distorts it so that it appears only in a symbolic form and with so apparently meaningless a character that the comfort of the sleeper is not affected. Or, the process may perhaps be more correctly expressed as a selective action which only allows experience to pass when it has assumed this guise.

In the waking state the censorship is held to be even more active, or rather more efficient. It only allows unconscious experience to escape in the forms of slips of the tongue or pen or to