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But there is another doubt, which we must not pass over in silence. If the narcissistic state of sleep has resulted in a drawing in of all the cathexes of the systems Ucs. and Pcs., then there can no longer be any possibility of the preconscious day’s residues being reinforced by unconscious instinctual impulses, seeing that these themselves have surrendered their cathexes to the ego. Here the theory of dream-formation ends up in a contradiction, unless we can rescue it by introducing a modification into our assumption about the narcissism of sleep.

A restrictive modification of this kind is, as we shall discover later, necessary in the theory of dementia praecox as well. This must be to the effect that the repressed portion of the system Ucs. does not comply with the wish to sleep that comes from the ego, that it retains its cathexis in whole or in part, and that in general, in consequence of repression, it has acquired a certain measure of independence of the ego. Accordingly, too, some amount of the expenditure on repression (anticathexis) would have to be maintained throughout the night, in order to meet the instinctual danger - though the inaccessibility of all paths leading to a release of affect and to motility may considerably diminish the height of the anticathexis that is necessary. Thus we should picture the situation which leads to the formation of dreams as follows. The wish to sleep endeavours to draw in all the cathexes sent out by the ego and to establish an absolute narcissism. This can only partly succeed, for what is repressed in the system Ucs. does not obey the wish to sleep. A part of the anticathexes has therefore to be maintained, and the censorship between the Ucs. and the Pcs. must remain, even if not at its full strength. So far as the dominance of the ego extends, all the systems are emptied of cathexes. The stronger the Ucs. instinctual cathexes are, the more unstable is sleep. We are acquainted, too, with the extreme case where the ego gives up the wish to sleep, because it feels unable to inhibit the repressed impulses set free during sleep - in other words, where it renounces sleep because of its fear of its dreams.