The Interpretation of Dreams

Convenient dreams are simple evocations of wish fulfillment—for instance, dreaming of drinking water when one is thirsty.

Counter-wish dreams are dreams that distort their latent wish content with manifest content that is frightful or negative. The negative content counters the positive value of the wish.

Dream-work is the mode by which the dream creates disguised manifest content out of latent content.

A hypermnesic dream has a higher capacity for memory than waking experience, often revealing memories of which we have no recollection.

A hypnogogic hallucination is a dream image that appears prior to falling asleep, in the mental space between sleep and wakefulness.

Hysteria is the now-defunct medical term for a mental disorder of excessive emotion, which was typically associated with women.

In Freud’s definition, neurosis is any negative psychic symptom as a result of conscious conflict with unconscious repressed material.

The Oedipal (for male children) or Elektra (for female children) complex refers to Freud's theory of a universal phase in development in which the child harbors sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and disdain for the same-sex parent.

A perennial dream is a piece of dream content that occurs repeatedly throughout life as a result of its linkage to infantile experiences.

Preconscious is a segment of the psyche between the conscious and unconscious minds, which serves as a filter on unconscious material entering the conscious mind.

The psi-systems are different components or systems of the “psychic apparatus,” Freud’s term to refer to the collective processes of the psyche on psychic material.

Secondary elaboration is the process of psychic commentary on dream events within the dream, which attempts to decipher and structure the dream but does not offer a true interpretation of its meaning.

Symbolic method is a lay model of dream interpretation that attempts to assign dream images to stable symbolic values, thereby interpreting the hidden meaning of dreams.