In the complicated and intricate dreams with which we are now concerned, condensation and dramatization do not wholly account for the difference between dream contents and dream thoughts.  There is evidence of a third factor, which deserves careful consideration.

When I have arrived at an understanding of the dream thoughts by my analysis I notice, above all, that the matter of the manifest is very different from that of the latent dream content.  That is, I admit, only an apparent difference which vanishes on closer investigation, for in the end I find the whole dream content carried out in the dream thoughts, nearly all the dream thoughts again represented in the dream content.  Nevertheless, there does remain a certain amount of difference.

The essential content which stood out clearly and broadly in the dream must, after analysis, rest satisfied with a very subordinate role among the dream thoughts.  These very dream thoughts which, going by my feelings, have a claim to the greatest importance are either not present at all in the dream content, or are represented by some remote allusion in some obscure region of the dream.  I can thus describe these phenomena:  During the dream work the psychical intensity of those thoughts and conceptions to which it properly pertains flows to others which, in my judgment, have no claim to such emphasis.  There is no other process which contributes so much to concealment of the dream’s meaning and to make the connection between the dream content and dream ideas irrecognizable.  During this process, which I will call the dream displacement, I notice also the psychical intensity, significance, or emotional nature of the thoughts become transposed in sensory vividness.  What was clearest in the dream seems to me, without further consideration, the most important; but often in some obscure element of the dream I can recognize the most direct offspring of the principal dream thought.

I could only designate this dream displacement as the transvaluation of psychical values.  The phenomena will not have been considered in all its bearings unless I add that this displacement or transvaluation is shared by different dreams in extremely varying degrees.  There are dreams which take place almost without any displacement.  These have the same time, meaning, and intelligibility as we found in the dreams which recorded a desire.  In other dreams not a bit of the dream idea has retained its own psychical value, or everything essential in these dream ideas has been replaced by unessentials, whilst every kind of transition between these conditions can be found.  The more obscure and intricate a dream is, the greater is the part to be ascribed to the impetus of displacement in its formation.

The example that we chose for analysis shows, at least, this much of displacement—­that its content has a different center of interest from that of the dream ideas.  In the forefront of the dream content the main scene appears as if a woman wished to make advances to me; in the dream idea the chief interest rests on the desire to enjoy disinterested love which shall “cost nothing”; this idea lies at the back of the talk about the beautiful eyes and the far-fetched allusion to “spinach.”