This is usually contrasted with what is referred to as the latent content or hidden meaning of the dream.
The sights, sounds, and storyline of the dream are the manifest content.
A dream interpreter might suggest that your dream reveals a hidden desire to seek freedom from your day-to-day life.
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This symbolic meaning behind the literal content of the dream is known as thelatent content.
The manifest content is the elements of the dream that you remember upon awakening.
Freud believed that theunconscious mindcontained desires, urges, and thoughts that are unacceptable to theconscious mind.
As you recall, Freud believed that dreams served as a form of wish fulfillment.
However, we tend to do this in hidden, symbolic forms.
For example, imagine a new person just started working at your office.
Everyone else seems to like this person, but you still feel a strange sense of ambivalence.
While the dream is obviously stressful, it does not really reflect the actions of this co-worker.
Thisdefense mechanisminvolves projecting your feelings onto someone else.
By doing this, you could explore your unconscious feelings in a way that seems more acceptable.
Some other common ways that the mind censors latent content include displacement, symbolization, rationalization, and condensation.
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