Abstract
The problem of meaning in dreams is examined along with the question of how such meaning may be legitimately extracted. Quantitative content analysis has shown that a rough continuity exists between dream content and awake experiences and concerns (and that, therefore, dreams are implicit memories). Continuity becomes more pronounced when figurative (latent) contents are taken into account in addition to literal (manifest) contents and when temporal disjunctions between dream experiences and life-events are factored in. Formal homologies exist between dreams and jokes, which provide a simplifying model for dream interpretation. Jokes prove, for example, that latent contents (which arise from interactions of surface manifest contents with context) convey crucial meanings missing in manifest contents. Dreams are release phenomena involving disinhibition and underregulation of content and style, and for this reason are simultaneously revealing and confusing. Dream distortions turn out to be identical to those found in other types of resource-poor cognition (e.g., aphasia, subliminal perception), suggesting that defense (“censorship”) is not necessarily responsible for dream distortion.
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