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Sigmund Freud about Dream InterpretationDefinition. – A dream is a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. The interpretation of dreams has as its object the removal of the disguise to which the dreamer’s thoughts have been subjected. It is, moreover, a highly valuable aid to psycho-analytic technique, for it constitutes the most convenient method of obtaining insight into unconscious psychical life. (From: On Psychoanalysis).The Interpretation of Dreams. – A new approach to the depths of mental life was opened when the technique of free association was applied to dreams, whether one’s own or those of patients in analysis. In fact, the greater and better part of what we know of the processes in the unconscious levels of the mind is derived from the interpretation of dreams. Psycho-analysis has restored to dreams the importance which was generally ascribed to them in ancient times, but it treats them differently. It does not rely upon the cleverness of the dream-interpreter but for the most part hands the task over to the dreamer himself by asking him for his associations to the separate elements of the dream. By pursuing these associations further we obtain knowledge of thoughts which coincide entirely with the dream but which can be recognized – up to a certain point – as genuine and completely intelligible portions of waking mental activity. Thus the recollected dream emerges as the manifest dream content, in contrast to the latent dream-thoughts discovered by interpretation. The process which has transformed the latter into the former, that is to say into “the dream”, and which is undone by the work of interpretation, may be called the “dream-work”. We also describe the latent dream-thoughts, on account of their connection with waking life, as  “residues of the day”. By the operation of the dream-work (to which it would be quite incorrect to ascribe any “creative” character ) the latent dream thoughts are condensed in a remarkable way, are distorted by the displacement of psychical intensities and are arranged with a view to being represented in visual pictures; and, besides all this, before the manifest dream is arrived at, they are submitted to a process of secondary revision which seeks to give the new product something in the nature of sense and coherence. Strictly speaking, this last process does not form a part of the dream-work.Enjoy!