Chapter 2 Freud: Psychoanalysis 55means that the dream image is replaced by some other idea only remotely related
to it (Freud, 1900/1953). Condensation and displacement of content both take place
through the use of symbols. Certain images are almost universally represented by
seemingly innocuous figures. For example, the phallus may be symbolized by
elongated objects such as sticks, snakes, or knives; the vagina often appears as any
small box, chest, or oven; parents appear in the form of the president, a teacher,
or one’s boss; and castration anxiety can be expressed in dreams of growing bald,
losing teeth, or any act of cutting (Freud, 1900/1953, 1901/1953, 1917/1963).
Dreams can also deceive the dreamer by inhibiting or reversing the dreamer’s
affect. For example, a man with homicidal feelings for his father may dream that
his father has died, but in the manifest dream content, he feels neither joy nor
sorrow; that is, his affect is inhibited. Unpleasant feelings can also be reversed at
the manifest dream level. For example, a woman who unconsciously hates her
mother and would unconsciously welcome her extinction may dream of her moth-
er’s death, but the unconscious joy and hatred she feels is expressed as sorrow and
love during the manifest level of the dream. Thus, she is fooled into believing that
hate is love and that joy is sorrow (Freud, 1900/1953, 1901/1953, 1915/1957a).
After the dream’s latent (unconscious) content has been distorted and its
affect inhibited or reversed, it appears in a manifest form that can be recalled by
the dreamer. The manifest content, which nearly always relates to conscious or
preconscious experience of the previous day, has little or no psychoanalytic sig-
nificance; only the latent content has meaning (Freud, 1900/1953).
In interpreting dreams, Freud (1917/1963) ordinarily followed one of two
methods. The first was to ask patients to relate their dream and all their associations
to it, no matter how unrelated or illogical these associations seemed. Freud believed
that such associations revealed the unconscious wish behind the dream. If the dreamer
was unable to relate association material, Freud used a second method—dream
symbols—to discover the unconscious elements underlying the manifest content. The
purpose of both methods (associations and symbols) was to trace the dream formation
backward until the latent content was reached. Freud (1900/1953, p. 608) believed
that dream interpretation was the most reliable approach to the study of unconscious
processes and referred to it as the “royal road” to knowledge of the unconscious.
Anxiety dreams offer no contradiction to the rule that dreams are wish fulfill-
ments. The explanation is that anxiety belongs to the preconscious system, whereas
the wish belongs to the unconscious. Freud (1900/1953) reported three typical
anxiety dreams: the embarrassment dream of nakedness, dreams of the death of a
beloved person, and dreams of failing an examination.
In the embarrassment dream of nakedness, the dreamer feels shame or embar-
rassment at being naked or improperly dressed in the presence of strangers. The
spectators usually appear quite indifferent, although the dreamer is very much
embarrassed. The origin of this dream is the early childhood experience of being
naked in the presence of adults. In the original experience, the child feels no embar-
rassment but the adults often register disapproval. Freud believed that wish fulfill-
ment is served in two ways by this dream. First, the indifference of the spectators
fulfills the infantile wish that the witnessing adults refrain from scolding. Second,
the fact of nakedness fulfills the wish to exhibit oneself, a desire usually repressed
in adults but present in young children.