I had occasion to contrast there the manifest and often peculiar dream-content with the latent but altogether real thoughts of the dream from which it originated, and I took up the investigation of the processes which make the dream from the latent dream-thought. I also investigated the psychological forces which participated in this transposition. The sum of the transforming processes I designated as the dream-work and, as a part of this dream-work, I described the process of condensation. This process has a striking similarity to the technique of wit and, like the latter, it leads to abbreviations and brings about substitutive formations of like character.
From recollections of his own dreams the reader will be familiar with the compositions of persons and objects that appear in them; indeed, the dream makes similar compositions of words which can then be reduced by analysis (e.g., Autodidasker—Autodidakt and Lasker[1]). On other occasions and even much more frequently, the condensation work of the dream produces no compositions, but pictures which closely resemble an object or person up to a certain addition or variation which comes from another source, like the modifications in the witticisms of Mr. N. We cannot doubt that in
- ↑ The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 280.
