By Danel 
Christopher Nolan confused many with his film Inception.
Nolan’s protagonist, “Dominick / Dom” (played by DiCaprio), invades people’s dreams, stealing their thoughts and implanting them with another thought. They cannot tell whether the thought implanted is theirs or their own, and they are deceived.
When Nolan used his imagination and skills to create Inception, these two psychological and spiritual experiences were the concrete foundation for his idea.
① Freudian Dream Psychology
When Freud wrote The Dream of the Dream in 1900, it was not a popular idea. He could not finish 600 copies in eight years. That changed later.
Dreams are the Royal Road to accessing and unleashing the unconscious mind. Dreams are the liberation of the “repressed” thoughts of your unconscious mind. That liberation helps you to correct, add, and subtract contexts.
For example, Freud himself had a dream one night when a patient who was receiving psychiatric help was feeling guilty about not getting better. In the dream, he saw the medications the patient was taking and realized that the reason for her not getting better was because she had used a contaminated syringe. This made him wake up. This clearly illustrates the “wish fulfillment” I mentioned above.
The information you see in your dreams that you remember from the real world is called manifest content, while the interpretation and meaning of dreams is found by focusing on the latent content that has been distorted or edited. In this way, Freud conducted clinical psychiatry by accessing the unconscious part of people’s minds.
This theory is reflected in the film, dressed in a high fantasy. We believe that without this fantasy, it would be difficult to imagine the underlying idea of the film.
② White Bear effect/Ironic Process Theory
The second idea: “To dream for others.” We give credit to Dostoevsky for the idea.
“If you keep your mind off of polar bears, that damn thing will come to mind every minute.”
(Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.”)
He wrote in an article published in “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions” (1863).
A century later, in 1987, social psychologist Daniel Wegner proposed a theory called the “Ironic Process Theory” or the “White Bear effect.” The theory was supported by research. Wegner asked participants not to think about the bear. However, the participants were repeatedly found to be preoccupied with thinking about it. In short, any thoughts that we “suppress” from thinking consciously become thoughts that we tend to think about over and over again.
This idea is repeatedly reflected in Inception, or Nolan has developed it well and brought it to life in a fantasy setting.
For example, the next dialogue Arthur is creating in Saito’s head will be an example of what we mentioned above.
Saito: If you can steal an idea, why can’t you plant one there instead?
Arthur: Okay, this is me, planting an idea in your mind. I say: don’t think about elephants. What are you thinking about?
Saito: Elephants?
Arthur: Right, but it’s not your idea!!!