Content (Freudian dream analysis)

Content in Freudian dream analysis refers to two closely connected aspects of the dream: the manifest content (the dream itself as it is remembered), and the latent content (the hidden meaning of the dream).^[1] Impulses and drives residing in the unconscious press toward consciousness during sleep, but are only able to evade the censorship mechanism of repression by associating themselves with words, ideas and images that are acceptable to consciousness. Thus the dream as consciously remembered upon waking (the manifest content) is interpreted in psychoanalysis as a disguised or distorted representation of repressed desires (the latent content).