Under authoritarianism people stop seeing things. "Percepticide" is
what Diana Taylor calls it [1] and what Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
refers to as the "Spiral of Silence" [2]. Dreams contain unprocessed
experience and suppression pushes that down into the unconscious where
it is processed and expressed in a creative and safe way. Such
sublime, symbolic expressions are extremely powerful weapons against
the suppressing force, and this is why (real not imitative) art,
writing and Psychoanalysis is feared by all mechanical and
authoritarian regimes.
[1] Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's Dirty War.
[2] Noelle-Neumann, The spiral of silence: Public opinion, our social skin, University of Chicago Press (1973)