The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

Displacementįreud noticed that important things in the latent content were often represented by seemingly insignificant things in the manifest content, and vice versa.Ī dream might seem to be about one thing, but the dream-thoughts can show it was really about something else.īecause of this phenomenon, Freud said that the relative importance of the dream elements could undergo displacement. It is also why the manifest content is so much more compact than the latent content. A single fragment of a dream can carry several latent dream-thoughts, even contradictory ones. The handling of words or names: “I am slad to see you go” combines “sad” and “glad”Ĭondensation is the reason why there is no neat, one-to-one correspondence between the elements of the manifest content and the latent content.A feature common to two or more disparate elements: Hitler and Ghandi were both vegetarians.

Two images overlaid onto one-another: “The face that I saw in the dream was at once my friend’s and my uncle’s.”.

In a sense the word says it all. A number of dream-elements (themes, images, figures, ideas etc) are combined into one. It is the dream-work which creates that form.”įreud identified four aspects of the dream-work. “At bottom, dreams are nothing other than a particular form of thinking. The dream-work is what allows the dream wishes to get past censorship. It is also what gives dreams their peculiar form.įreud called the dream-work “the essence of dreaming.” He wrote:

The dream-work is the unconscious ciphering that transforms the latent content into the manifest content.Īs such, the work of interpreting the dream follows the dream-work in reverse, from the manifest content to the latent content. “The task of dream interpretation is to unravel what the dream-work has woven.” Sigmund Freud Dreams follow their own kind of logic that Freud calls the 'dream-work'.

The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud