ABSTRACT
The latent content of dreams consists of dynamically unconscious wishes, latent dream-thoughts, sensory excitations. Dynamically unconscious wishes prevented by the censorship from reaching consciousness or even the system preconscious during waking life. The infantile scene is unable to bring about its own revival and has to be content with returning as a dream. Latent dream-thoughts include current preconscious preoccupations and wishes, or indifferent impressions of waking life which have retained some cathexis during sleep. As Freud puts it: 'Not only are the elements of a dream determined by the dream-thoughts many times over, but the individual dream-thoughts are represented in the dream by several elements'. Thus a dream appears to be a reaction to everything that is simultaneously present in the sleeping mind as currently active material.
