frequently strike one by their unusual wording. They do not appear to be
expressed in the sober form which our thinking prefers; rather are they
expressed symbolically by allegories and metaphors like the figurative
language of the poets. It is not difficult to find the motives for this
degree of constraint in the expression of dream ideas. The dream content
consists chiefly of visual scenes; hence the dream ideas must, in the
first place, be prepared to make use of these forms of presentation.
Conceive that a political leader's or a barrister's address had to be
transposed into pantomime, and it will be easy to understand the
transformations to which the dream work is constrained by regard for
this _dramatization of the dream content_.

Around the psychical stuff of dream thoughts there are ever found
reminiscences of impressions, not infrequently of early
childhood--scenes which, as a rule, have been visually grasped. Whenever
possible, this portion of the dream ideas exercises a definite influence
upon the modelling of the dream content; it works like a center of
crystallization, by attracting and rearranging the stuff of the dream
thoughts. The scene of the dream is not infrequently nothing but a
modified repetition, complicated by interpolations of events that have
left such an impression; the dream but very seldom reproduces accurate
and unmixed reproductions of real scenes.

The dream content does not, however, consist exclusively of scenes, but
it also includes scattered fragments of visual images, conversations,
and even bits of unchanged thoughts. It will be perhaps to the point if
we instance in the briefest way the means of dramatization which are at
the disposal of the dream work for the repetition of the dream thoughts
in the peculiar language of the dream.