Death İnstinct

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.