Psychological truth is what has an absolute character in relation to self-regarding motives. The interest of the latter is in perpetuating themselves. There may, in the end, be no self to regard, but that is not the business of such motives. Truth, then, in the first instance is what can modify complex structures of mediation and reward. When truth is faced, something must be changed; although one wonders whether the thought is enough, whether writing a poem was enough for Rilke after his archaic torso? The truth sets you free, but it is not the only choice or the easiest one. There may be a splitting of the response, the waking self being well-enough supported in its ways to shunt the thing aside, while the dreamer's mind, freer but having no such adjuncts, no thick skin or killer immune system, can't help but take it in. This might explain some of the uncomfortable realisations that haunt dreams and spill over into the waking mind during the pre-dawn hours. The defense mechanism are fashioned out of imagination and thus are among the materials readily available to the composer of the dream. In the dream inventory they remain taut and fully functional but are detached from context with their outward facing surfaces exposed, shards of truth still adhering to them. The dreamer undergoes no psychological development, no maturation, except perhaps in a subtle aesthetic sensibility, in ways of getting the most effects (and choicest affects) out of what's at hand, which is another form of the appetite for truth, a drive that itself has grown more at home in the dark.