When anxiety features in a dream it may be just that - straightforward anxiety. On the other hand, it may be a disguise for some repressed aggression or resentment.
Ixt us say you dream of the death of a loved one, and you wake up in a sweat and frantic with concern about that person (partner, parent or whatever). It may be that the anxiety you felt in the dream and / or on waking from the dream is what Freud called a defence mechanism - that is, a ruse we adopt for protecting ourselves against unbearable, unacceptable feelings. The first time we experience a strong negative feeling against someone near to us, we tend to ‘put it out of mind’. In realitv, however, what happens to such banished feelings is not that
they disappear; rather, they remain with us, in the unconscious part of our psyche. Rejection of feelings because they are morally repugnant or terrifying in their possible consequences is what Freud called ‘repression’ or ‘suppression’. (Remember: suppression is a conscious act, repression an unconscious act.) What causes us to suppress or repress a feeling of hatred or jealousy or resentment, or a desire to kill or hurt or perform some other socially proscribed act, is anxiety - anxiety about the consequences. Therefore, whenever anxiety reappears in our dreams we need to look for possible repressed feelings or desires that brought the anxiety about in the first place.
‘A dream is a (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish,’ said Freud in his epoch-making book The Interpretation of Dreams; and this, he went on, applied even - no, especially - to so-called anxiety dreams. Freud is wrong, of course, in over-generalizing: many anxiety dreams are quite straightforward undisguised expressions of fears for someone or about some situation. However, do not assume that Freud is wrong with regard to any particular dream before you have honestly examined both your dream and yourself with a view to finding (which may mean recollecting) a negative desire that might be lurking behind the dream’s cloak of anxiety.
One of the categories of dreams that Freud classified as ‘typical’ is the death of a person of whom the dreamer is fond. vSuch dreams, said Freud, always represent the dreamer’s wish that the person should die. Between brothers and sisters there is often jealousy, and wicked wishes arising in childhood may be harboured in the unconscious for a very long time - for as long as we care to leave them there. The same applies to the jealousy and hatred a young child may feel towards a parent.
It may be that your dream of a loved one dying is prompted by a recent worry about the loved one. But dreams whose contents are determined by recent experiences may express feelings that have a long history in your life. Indeed, it could be that, if the loved one in the dream is your partner, any jealousy or hatred you may be feeling towards him or her mav be the jealousy or hatred you felt as a child towards your parent of the opposite sex, now transferred to your partner. Repressed hostile feelings have a way of repeating themselves in one situation alter another, with one person after another.