La pesadilla y la psicosis

Abstract

The similarity of the dream with hallucination and psychosis is a constant idea that runs, in the background, throughout Freud's work. It is therefore quite surprising that Freud does not pay attention to the specific status of the nightmare in relation to both. The aim of this paper is, in its starting point, to fill this gap: to bring to light, by examining the two Freudian texts –the 14th of his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1915-1917) and the Scheme of Psychoanalysis (1938)–, the theoretical place of the nightmare at the frontier that separates dream and psychosis, by pointing out certain common significant uses by Freud in his description of both nightmare and psychosis. In the light of which the borderline position of the nightmare in relation to psychosis –in which insomnia comes to occupy a prominent position– is established, and the central deficit of the psychotic ego is examined, concluding that it is the result of the failure in the construction of the superego.