Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/300

288 economy in presentation is effected, for a highly complex and abstract resemblance may be expressed by simply fusing the figures of the persons concerned. Thus, if two persons both show the sentiments of envy, fear and malice towards the subject of the dream these sentiments may be expressed by the appearance in the manifest content of a composite figure of the two persons. In this composite figure there may be traits common to both persons, such as colour of hair or other personal characteristics, but the essential resemblance, which is the cardinal point in the underlying dream thoughts, is as a rule not evident in the dream. The superficial resemblance presented in the dream is frequently thus the cover for a deeper and more significant one, and gives the clue to important constituents of the dream thoughts. The process in question may also represent merely the wish that there were such a resemblance between the two persons, and therefore the wish that they might be exchanged in their relation to the subject. When, for instance, a married lady dreams that she is breakfasting alone with some man friend, the interpretation is often a simple matter. In the second place condensation, like the other distorting mechanisms, subserves the function of evading the censor of consciousness. This is a matter that will presently be further discussed, but it is plain that a repressed and inacceptable wish that two persons or places may resemble each other in an important respect, or may be interchanged, can be expressed in the manifest content of a dream by presenting an insignificant resemblance between the two.

It might be assumed from the description given above that the process of condensation takes place in one direction only, that each element in the manifest content represents a number of elements in the latent content in the same way that a delegate represents the members of his constituency. This, however, is not so, for not only is every element in the manifest content connected with several in the latent content, but every element in the latter is connected with several in the former. In addition to this, frequently associations exist between the different elements of the entire structure of the dream, so that this often has the appearance of a tangled network until the full analysis brings law and order out of the whole.

The second distorting mechanism is that termed Displacement (Verschiebung). In most dreams it is found after analysis that there is no correspondence between the psychical intensity of a given element in the manifest content and the associated elements in the latent content. An element that stands in the foreground of interest in the former, and seems to be the central feature of the dream, may represent the least