It happened that this dreamer had long been familiar with the demands of dream-interpretation; otherwise he might have taken exception to the idea of investigating so trivial a detail as the shape of a table. We do literally deny that anything in the dream is a matter of chance or of indifference, and it is precisely by enquiring into such trivial and (apparently) unmotivated details that we expect to arrive at our conclusion. You may perhaps still be surprised that the dream-work should happen to choose the table, in order to express the thought “Our relationship is just like theirs.” But even this is explicable when you learn that the family in question was named “_Tischler_.” (_Tisch_ = table.) In making his relations sit at this table the dreamer’s meaning was that they too were “Tischler.”[27] And notice another thing: that in relating dream-interpretations of this sort one is forced into indiscretion. There you have one of the difficulties I alluded to in the matter of choosing examples. I could easily have given you another example instead of this one, but probably I should have avoided this indiscretion only to commit another in its place. This seems to me a good point at which to introduce two new terms which we might have used already. Let us call the dream as related _the manifest dream-content_, and the hidden meaning, which we should come by in following out the associations, _the latent dream-thoughts_. Then we must consider the relation between the manifest content and the latent thoughts, as shown in the above examples. There are many varieties of these relations. In examples (_a_) and (_b_) the manifest dream-element is also an integral part of the latent thoughts, but only a fragment of them. A small piece of a great, composite, mental structure in the unconscious dream-thoughts has made its way into the manifest dream also, in the form of a fragment or in other cases as an allusion, like a catch-word or an abbreviation in a telegraphic code. The interpretation has to complete the whole to which this scrap or allusion belongs, which it did most successfully in example (_b_). One method of the distorting process in which the dream-work consists is therefore that of substituting for something else a fragment or an allusion. In example (_c_) we notice, moreover, another possible relation between manifest content and latent thought, a relation which is even more plainly and distinctly expressed in the following examples:— (_d_) _The dreamer was pulling a certain lady of his acquaintance out of a ditch._ He himself found the meaning of this dream-element by means of the first association. It meant: he “picked her out,” preferred her.[28] (_e_) Another man dreamt _that his brother was digging up his garden all over again_. The first association was to deep-trenching for vegetables, the second gave the meaning. The brother was _retrenching_. (Retrenching his expenses).[29]