According to Freud’s dream theory, the unconscious which was also known as the Id is where all your desire, fear, pain and conflict locates. When you are awake, the desires and fear are suppressed by the superego. However, when you are dreaming, you are able to access the id or unconscious mind because your guards are down during dream state so then your unconscious has an opportunity to act out and express the fear of the Id. This was demonstrated during the whole movie. Whenever Cobb sees his wife, Mal, his children Phillipa and James in his dream, he cannot control himself. He said that everything he saw when he dreams are his memories that he regrets and have fear of. It is believed that Cobb is trying to repress his painful memories deep into his unconscious and being seen in dream while his superego’s guard is low in defense.
In the movie Cobb and his crew were trying to access layers of dream, dream within a dream. That might sound ridiculous but Freud’s definition for that is defensive, to detract from the importance of what is “dreamt” in the dream.
When Cobb and his crew were in Robert Fischer’s dream, there were people attacking them. It was suggested as “Robert was trained to not let some other people steal ideas in his dream”, and “Never lower defense even when you’re asleep”. This may link to Freud’s theory, where your superego is trying to stop your Id going into your ego.
The activate-synthesis theory, which is a biological theory introduced by Hobson and McCarley, focuses on rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and how neurons send random messages to create a story that seems to have a meaning. Furthermore, there was a meaning in Inception, in Robert Fischer’s dream. It was planned to be something meaningful to Robert and aiming to change his mind in reality.
Lucid dreaming was also a huge concept in Inception. Cobb and his crew knew that they were dreaming and are able to control their movement and idea. This idea does not fit with activation-synthesis, as it means dreams are controllable and not random.Gathering these statements, it is suggested that activate-synthesis theory does not seem to relate much in Inception.
In conclusion, it is believed that the movie Inception seems to relate more to the Freud dream theory based on the above analysis of scenes in the movie.
