Some dreams are so vivid and intense that we definitely think they mean something. Well, Freud certainly thought so. But in order to analyze our dreams, we need to find the hidden meaning, in other words, the latent content.

Dream analysis and latent content

In order to understand dream analysis and latent content, I just want to get a very quick update on psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud. It will be fast, I promise, and relevant.

Freud and the unconscious mind

Psychoanalysis is a type of talk therapy. Patients talk to therapists about their problems. However, Freud was one of the first psychiatrists to look beyond the conscious memories of his patients.

He understood the importance of the unconscious mind. And in that, it was what the patient couldn’t tell him that was really important.

The problem was that patients were repressing these thoughts. Not only that, but many were unable to tell their therapists because it was hidden from the patient’s conscious mind. For reasons of trauma, guilt, or shame, these thoughts now reside in the subconscious.

How could Freud reward them? To answer this, we need to briefly summarize our knowledge of Freud’s most famous theory – his structural model of the mind.

The id, the ego, and the superego

Freud suggested that our personalities consist of the id, ego, and superego. The identity is childish and wants its own needs met. The ego is reasonable and uses logic to satisfy the id. The superego is the moral voice of the id and the ego.

Now, where are these three structures located within our conscious and subconscious minds? Crucially, Freud stated that the id is located entirely in our unconscious mind. The ego and superego are partly conscious.

So think about what that means. Our basic wants, needs and desires are always located in our subconscious mind.

This is important because as Freud realized – everyone dreams, and this meant that dream analysis was a valuable resource. As such, it can provide constructive insight into a person’s subconscious mind.

“Dream interpretation is the royal road to knowing the unconscious activities of the mind.” Freud

This brings us to two types of dream content.

The difference between manifest and latent content
Freud distinguished between two types of content in dreams:

Visible content
Latent content
Manifest content: This is the actual content, what the dreamer remembers, the story of the dream. The content of the statement usually depends on the events of that day.

Latent content: This is the hidden meaning of the dream, the underlying desire, and the most important part. This is the symbolic part of the dream.

Let’s go back to ego for a second. When we are asleep our ego is freed. It is free from the constraints of our waking mind. As a result, these repressions want to rise to the surface and surface in our dreams.

Freud called this “wish fulfillment” or repressed desires.

Dreams are unfulfilled wishes

These are wants or desires that we do not dare to acknowledge when we are in our full consciousness, so we bury them in our subconscious.

We want something we can’t have or have been told we can’t have. This produces the need for the thing we cannot have and the blocking of that need. The result is a repressed desire for it.

This is where the latent content is very important because repressed desires are always present at this level of the dream. It also exists on the apparent level, but it is camouflaged.

So how can we begin to analyze our dreams?

Freud and dream work
We now know that dreams have two types of content; The apparent and the latent. Now, we have to discover a way to decipher the clues hidden in the manifest content to understand the latent content of the dream.

Freud never asked his patients to explain to them what their dreams meant. Instead, they were asked to say what came to mind with each part of the dream. This is “free association”.

It’s a bit like being a detective with certain tools at your disposal. Remember that the dream is trying to hide aspects of itself within the apparent content. However, these clues can only be left out. Freud called this detective work “dream work.”

Four stages of dream work:

concentration
Condensation is the condensation of several elements into one. For example, people, topics, ideas, words, images, etc. For example, the appearance of many male figures in your dream and the word “more” may indicate that the dream is about your father.

displacement

Freud noticed that some important details in the latent content were replaced by unimportant elements in the manifest content and vice versa.

Representation considerations

This is where the detective in us comes in very handy. Dreams are visual, so we see them as a collection of moving images. But those images are called something, and when we translate them into words, we can infer a deeper meaning to our dream.

For example, you can dream of a race involving rats, but until you say the word “rat race,” your dream will seem meaningless.

High school review

Secondary review takes place after completing all the above levels. It’s basically a second look at all the information now gathered from the three operations. Secondary review helps create the narrative and structure of the dream.

Why is latent content so important

Freud believed that the only way we can move forward after childhood trauma, repressed desires, or unfulfilled desires is to tap into the subconscious. To this end, he devised a way to use the latent content of dreams as a pathway into our subconscious.

We may take this for granted these days, but in Freud’s time, you have to remember how groundbreaking this would have been.