Death Instinct

The study of dreams may be regarded as the most trustworthy approach to the explo-rati­on of the deeper psychic processes. Now in the traumatic neuroses the dream life has this peculiarity: it continually takes the patient back to the situation of his disaster, from which he awakens in renewed terror. This fact has caused less surprise than it merits.

The obtru-sion on the patient over and again, even in sleep, of the impression made by the traumatic experience is taken as being merely a proof of its strength. The patient has so to speak under-gone a psychi­cal fixation as to the trauma.