Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners by Sigmund Freud
page 20 of 176 (11%)
page 20 of 176 (11%)
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which my memory evokes with the dream and other added matter revealed by
analysis: the former I call the dream's _manifest content_; the latter, without at first further subdivision, its _latent content_. I arrive at two new problems hitherto unformulated: (1) What is the psychical process which has transformed the latent content of the dream into its manifest content? (2) What is the motive or the motives which have made such transformation exigent? The process by which the change from latent to manifest content is executed I name the _dream-work_. In contrast with this is the _work of analysis_, which produces the reverse transformation. The other problems of the dream--the inquiry as to its stimuli, as to the source of its materials, as to its possible purpose, the function of dreaming, the forgetting of dreams--these I will discuss in connection with the latent dream-content. I shall take every care to avoid a confusion between the _manifest_ and the _latent content_, for I ascribe all the contradictory as well as the incorrect accounts of dream-life to the ignorance of this latent content, now first laid bare through analysis. The conversion of the latent dream thoughts into those manifest deserves our close study as the first known example of the transformation of psychical stuff from one mode of expression into another. From a mode of expression which, moreover, is readily intelligible into another which we can only penetrate by effort and with guidance, although this new mode must be equally reckoned as an effort of our own psychical activity. From the standpoint of the relationship of latent to manifest dream-content, dreams can be divided into three classes. We can, in the first place, distinguish those dreams which have a _meaning_ and are, at the same time, _intelligible_, which allow us to penetrate into our psychical life without further ado. Such dreams are numerous; they are |
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