A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
The first process of the dream-work is _condensation_. By this we
understand that the manifest dream has a smaller content than the latent
one, that is, it is a sort of abbreviated translation of the latter.
Condensation may occasionally be absent, but as a rule it is present,
often to a very high degree. The opposite is never true, that is, it
never occurs that the manifest dream is more extensive in scope and
content than the latent. Condensation occurs in the following ways: 1.
Certain latent elements are entirely omitted; 2. only a fragment of the
many complexes of the latent dream is carried over into the manifest
dream; 3. latent elements that have something in common are collected
for the manifest dream and are fused into a whole.
If you wish, you may reserve the term "condensation" for this last
process alone. Its effects are particularly easy to demonstrate. From
your own dreams you will doubtless recall the fusion of several persons
into one. Such a compound person probably looks like A., is dressed like
B., does something that one remembers of C., but in spite of this one is
conscious that he is really D. By means of this compound formation
something common to all four people is especially emphasized. One can
make a compound formation of events and of places in the same way as of
people, provided always that the single events and localities have
something in common which the latent dream emphasizes. It is a sort of
new and fleeting concept of formation, with the common element as its
kernel. This jumble of details that has been fused together regularly
results in a vague indistinct picture, as though you had taken several
pictures on the same film.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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