The movie Inception is basically about a team of thieves for hire who invade others' dreams to uncover their secrets. After a troublesome past, Dom is offered an opportunity to see his kids again but only if he can accomplish the impossible-inception. I find it very interesting in the movie that aside from the main conflict, Dom also faced extreme internal conflict. This conflict centered around the concept that one could simply choose to ignore the truth, and repress it deep within themselves. As a result, many of his problems in the real world were induced by events in the dream.
These connections also exist in the real world. Often things or situations that seem insurmountable in a conscious mind can work themselves out in an unconscious mind. But there are also negative sides to this. Many mental illnesses have aspects that can have outside consequences. Psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia can cause delusions and hallucinations and the brain disorder narcolepsy causes serious symptoms do to a lack of sleep. In the movie, Dom's lack of real sleep caused to experience hallucinations of his past that affected his work.
Throughout the film it is said that you have to have an understanding of what is real and what is not. In his Second Meditation Descartes says "I believe that body, figure, extension, motion, and place are merely fictions of my mind." When the team go in the dream there is always someone there who's actually dreaming. This person supplies the dreams with architecture and landscape and the person they plan to steal from actually fills it with people. But sometimes the victim will realize it's not their dream.
Even though Descartes believes that in order to find truth, you'd have to doubt everything first, this film suggests that figuring out reality is about accepting that reality. And many lock up the truth they know for the reality they desire.
When you lock away the truth, you essentially trick yourself into believing another alter reality and you in turn seclude yourself in this vicious cycle. In allowing himself to believe in this altered reality in which he could confide in himself and really be his own in the fact that he could really set up the reality he desired, Dom led himself down a dark path that was his own destruction.
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