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This article throws light upon the five main mechanisms of dream work. The mechanisms are: 1. Condensation 2. Displacement 3. Dramatization 4. Secondary Elaboration.
Mechanism # 1. Condensation:
It is an unconscious mechanism by which dream work is accomplished. A single item of the manifest content of the dream may be formed of parts of several ideas and wishes of the latent content. This is done by the mechanism of condensation. The most important feature of condensation consists in fusing many latent elements possessing a common denominator in one idea or picture.
The competitive desire to rival his father or brother, his wives’ first husband and his friends are condensed in the combination of titles. In most cases portions of the latent dream content are omitted and only unimportant fragments, appear in dream.
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These important parts are displaced. For example, several meaningful words of the latent content may form one word in the manifest content. Similarly, many persons in the latent content may be represented by one person in the manifest content.
According to Blum (1969) “Through condensation objectionable thoughts are disguised by being broken into elements and formed into new obscure combination, resulting in such phenomena as mixed images or composite persons bearing the feature of several different individuals”.
Freud (1938) gives the illustration of dream condensation in the following example.
“A colleague sent an essay of his, in which he had, in my opinion, over-estimated the value of a recent physiological discovery and had expressed himself, moreover, in extravagant terms.On the following, I dreamed a sentence which obviously referred to this essay. This is a truly “Norekdal style.” The solution of this word formation at first gave me some difficulty; it was unquestionably formed as a parody of the superlatives “colossal,” “pyramidal,” but it was not easy to say where it came from. At last the monster fell apart into the two names Nora and Ekdal, from two well known plays by Ibsen. I had previously read a newspaper article on Ibsen by the writer whose latest work I was now criticizing in my dream.”
Mechanism # 2. Displacement:
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Every wish of the individual has some emotional tone attached to it. In the conscious expression the affect centres upon the more significant idea. But when the idea is unconscious and under repression and when it is not affected by the ego, the affect or feeling tone may be displaced to less significant ideas.
The ideas in the manifest content due to displacement may be very confused or misleading. What seems to be an important item in the manifest content due to its emotional attachment may not be really so significant in the latent content.
Similarly, highly significant ideas belonging to the latent content is represented by an apparently insignificant idea in the manifest content. Thus, an important affect is attached to an unimportant idea. Displacement is responsible for much of the quality of bizzareness in dreams.
Displacement is thus an unconscious mechanism by which the manifest content of the dream is purposely centred elsewhere than upon the essential aspects. A person saw a dream that he has written a botanical monograph of a certain plant.
Analysing this dream Freud could trace many subtle connections to complex inter-personal relationship with his colleague. In this monograph, Freud found that the troublesome unconscious attitudes of the dreamer were conveniently displaced.
Mechanism # 3. Dramatization:
In the process of becoming conscious in the dream wishes have to be converted into more or less concrete visual images. This conversion of abstract ideas into concrete symbols constitutes what Freud regards as dramatization of the wish. Freud therefore opines that the process whereby the latent dream thoughts are expressed in terms of visual images is called the process of dramatization.
By means of dramatization, the true meaning of the dream is concealed to cheat the ego. Through the procedure of dramatization, the manifest dream content persistently portrays a present action or series of actions mostly through the medium of visual imagery such as pictures. More often abstract words are replaced by pictographs of their original concrete meanings.
Freud opines “clearly what has to be accomplished by the dream work is the transformation of the latent thoughts as expressed in words, into perceptual images”.
Mechanism # 4. Secondary Elaboration:
Secondary elaboration makes the dream coherent and meaningful. Its main function is to bring distorted products of dream work more into harmony with the standards of conscious thinking, i.e., to make sense of the dream. The secondary elaboration tries to give a reasonable meaning to the dream and by that conceals its real meaning and significance. Thus it is a spontaneous but wholly inaccurate dream interpretation.
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It tends to constitute the various parts of the dream to a unified whole which can be assimilated by the general content of consciousness. Secondary elaboration is achieved by means of rearrangement and interpolation. The effect of this rearrangement and interpolation is to further disguise the real meaning and distort the relationships of the underlying latent thoughts.
According to Blum (1969) through this technique an attempt is made by the ego to connect the condensed, displaced and symbolic parts of the dream in a manner at least somewhat consistent with conscious logic. In other words, the ego’s more advanced secondary process of thinking is not completely suspended during dream formation.
This pulling together of a senseless mass of thought fragments is mainly illusory from a logical stand point and the underlying emotional tone of the basic impulses remains unchanged.
Hence, by the technique of secondary elaboration out of largely disconnected and distorted pictures, some coherent story is made. The material of the secondary elaboration is secured from the preconsciousness. While reporting dream even careful reporters add something to the dream and subtract something from it to enhance the dramatic effect of the report and to achieve a greater degree of coherence.
This is otherwise called secondary elaboration. Here a consistent and presentable feature is given to a smaller, uncorrelated and incoherent dream. Secondary elaboration is related to our conscious mental mechanism, and it makes the dream more complex.
According to Freud (1938), the first three of the four mechanisms of dream work are processes which operate in the unconscious state. The last one i.e., the secondary elaboration is however related to ones conscious mental life. It starts when the individual is awake while the other three processes continue completely in the unconscious state when the individual dreams.
Earnest Jones (1957) thus comments, “Secondary elaboration is closely related to rationalization.” To avoid the process of secondary elaboration in dream the analyst usually instructs the dreamer to write down the dream immediately after he visualizes it.