________________
52: śramaņa, Vol 63, No. 3, July-Sep. 2012 mental conflict, where a person experiences an instinctual impulse which is sharply incompatible with the standards he feels he must adhere to, it is possible for him to put it out of consciousness, to flee from it, to pretend that it does not exist. So repression is one of the so-called 'defense mechanism’,22 by which a person attempts to avoid inner conflicts. But it is essentially a withdrawal from reality, and that is doomed to failure because what is repressed does not really disappear, but continues to exist in unconscious portion of the mind. One can neither gets rid of it nor lift it voluntarily. Hence problem continues. Freud locates the decisive repressions in early childhood and his emphasis on sexuality also proves them to be basically sexual.23
Freud opines that most of our dream symbols are sexual by nature. Actually he is aware that he should not give unnecessary importance to the sexual aspect of dreams but his study revealed to him what he has written in the 'Interpretation of Dreams' as 'The more one concerned with the solution of dreams, the more one is driven to recognize that the majority of the dreams of adults deal with sexual material and give expression to erotic wishes. A judgment on this point can be formed only by those who really analyze dreams, that is to say, who make their way through their manifest content to the latent dream thoughts, and never by those who are satisfied with making a note of the manifest content alone. Let me say at once that this fact is not in the least surprising but is in complete harmony with the principles of my explanation of dreams. No other instinct has been subjected since childhood to so much suppression as the sexual instinct with its numerous components, from no other instinct are so many and such powerful unconscious wishes left over, ready to produce dreams in a state of sleep. In interpreting dreams, we should never forget the significance of sexual complexes, though we should also, of course avoid the exaggeration of attributing exclusive importance to them (1909). "24 Hence Freud never said that all the symbols require a sexual interpretation. Regarding this he had alarmed readers very clearly. He has also mentioned that most
