Blackwell Reference Online

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Essential aspects of the workings of unconscious processes, and especially of symptoms and the D ream-work , as analyzed by F reud (1900) . Thanks to the mechanism of condensation, a single unconscious idea can express the content of several chains of association; the mechanism comes into play at the nodal point at which they intersect. Condensation explains the apparently laconic nature of the M anifest content of the dream, as compared with the richness of the L atent Content . The term displacement refers to the process whereby the emphasis or intensity of an unconscious idea is detached from that idea and transferred to a second and less intense idea to which it is linked by chains of association. The effect or emotional charge attached to a highly sexualized idea may, for instance, be displaced on to a more neutral image or idea. In such cases displacement is an effect of censorship. Condensation and displacement are likened by L acan (1957) , for whom the U nconscious is structured like a language, to the rhetorical figures of M etaphor and metonymy . 1900 : The Interpretation of Dreams . 1957 : “The agency of the letter in the unconscious or Reason since Freud.” . ... log in or subscribe to read full text