freud publishes the interpretation of dreams

Condensation is the combining of two elements of desire into a single manifest element in the dream. This occurs by two methods: condensation and displacement. However, adult dreams tend to be more obscure. In this case, the dream work doesn’t do any work it gives the desire fully over to the conscious dream. That night, she dreams walking down the path. A daughter walks with her father through a forest and desires to go down a long path, but the father rejects it. A child is hungry upon going to sleep and dreams eating a cake. Infantile dreams, experienced by children, can refer to the desire itself. This can be done through a couple of methods, depending on the manifest content of the dream. Analysis works to reverse engineer the dream work. Or, in other words, it is what creates the dream in a way that is constitutive of repressed desires. The dream work is the mental faculty that converts the latent content into the manifest content. And this is important for psychotherapy because patients who exhibit psychotic behavior can be cured if the repressed desire is made exposed. The latent content makes visible the repressed desires of the dreamer. It is what can be extracted through psychotherapy and analysis.

The latent content is the deeper meaning underlying the dream. The manifest content is the contents of the dream itself (or what is remembered of the dream). The elements of the dream must be analyzed in order to give access to the unconscious and repressed desires of the dreamer.įreud systemizes the understanding of dreams. A literal interpretation will often fail to understand the repressed desire. Does this mean I have a desire to run down a railroad track? Freud would say no. For example, I have a dream of running down a railroad tracks.

He states, “They are concealed realisations of repressed desires.” At first, this definition seems contradictory to the characterization of dreams. Photo by Alexander Possingham on UnsplashĪccording to Freud, dreams act as wish fulfillment.

Freud publishes the interpretation of dreams