Repressed Desires Quotes

“In the last case it is clear that state censorship played its part, but the distortion of dreams should also be understood as psychic protection from the messages they carry.

When the energies of the night are wrenched into the day through the process of linguistic representation, repressed desires and wishes can no longer evaporate through a process of forgetting. Benjamin, in One Way Street, equates such writing-up with betrayal, for it is in the moment of transcription that latent desires have to be confronted.

Just as the person who wakes up after dreaming betrays the night with food, so too does the writer who reaches for a pen. Censorship operates to protect dreamers from their dreams. Elaboration operates to capture the intensity of the dream-experience against the inadequacies of memory and language.”
― Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Tales out of Loneliness

“But he was so hungry. There was something chewing at him from the inside, trying to get out. His head wasn't right. But he was so hungry-”
― Arden Powell, Flesh and Bone

“I've recklessly allowed my Harrisford-related fantasies to run rampant. On more than one occasion I've fallen asleep, still shuddering from my self-induced orgasms, with images of Harrisford's perfectly proportioned face crowding my muddled mind.
It feels okay to be imagining him, since I'll probably never see him again. We'll be enemies forever, after he betrayed me so badly, but soon enough the memories of him will fade to pale and shadowy echoes. And, surely, my hatred will eventually simmer down to a brooding sort of contempt.
In fact, I don't have to feel at all guilty about objectifying him, because he means nothing to me. Nothing. He's ceased to be an actual person. He's just a face, a body, a collection of physical attributes that trigger a purely physiological reaction. Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin: chemicals that activate the pleasure centers in my brain.
Or perhaps I'm self-sabotaging, fancying the one person who I hate the most, the one individual who has so thoroughly ruined me. Like a stress fracture that won't heal because I stubbornly continue to run on it.”
― Keshe Chow, Strange Familiars