Secondary Revision

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

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  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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According to Freud in

The Interpretation of Dreams

(1900) when we are dreaming the censor which prevents the conscious mind perceiving what is repressed in the unconscious is relaxed. When we wake in the middle of a dream the conscious mind is momentarily aware of the dream thoughts and a process of “secondary revision” then occurs which attempts to recuperate the problematic contents of the unconscious into a plausible story.

As the name “bearbeitung” (re-working) implies, this process is seen as coming after the original “Traumarbeit” (dream-work) which uses the mechanisms of condensation and displacement to figure the repressed dream thoughts. Secondary revision removes as many manifest absurdities as it can in the attempt to render the whole intelligible and, as far as it

289 words

Citation: Clark, Robert. "Secondary Revision". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1605, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1605 Secondary Revision 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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