Dreams seem mysterious at ancient times, they are always connected with the augury in some countries, if you remember your dream-content, the visionary will tell you what your dream signifies, whether it is a favorable or an ominous augury. When I was a child, I wondered what a dream was, where did they come from? It’s a consciousness existing out of our mind? Or it’s just our imagination? Freud made an analysis of dreams as a psychological research, it’s more reasonable for us to understand the formation of the dream. In 《The Interpretation of Dreams》, there are relations investigated between the dream-content and dream-thoughts.
Sometimes, dreams are weird, but most of them are vivid. You can even “watch” yourself doing activities with a feeling as an outsider. Dream-content can be manifest or obscure in different forms. In general, the background in the dream is our living environment and dream-content is made of familiar objects, our friends or family members, but it also could be a nightmare about being injured or murdered.
It’s obvious that dreams are generally connected with the related events happening in the daytime. I could have a dream taking an examination nervously because of the coming test in the real life; I could have another dream looking for water with difficulty because I’m thirsty when I’m asleep… These are typical examples coming from the potential consciousness, that’s an unconscious process of thought. During the state of sleep, the brain is still “awake”, and these active thoughts form the dream. That’s another reason why dreams always seem real, a person may cry during his sleep because of a sorrowful dream, or feel disappointed because he thought that happy dream were the reality. Due to the close connection with dream-thoughts, dream-content becomes living. The subconscious dream activity persists for several minutes after waking. Even though you have realized that’s a dream, not real, you’re still inclined to finish this dream.
Dreams can lead us to relevant memories or even childhood memory, the childhood recollection sometimes arises by accident in the dream. I still remember when I was a little girl, I was so keen on sketch and watercolor, but I had to give up this hobby as my studies were getting busy, after I graduated from high school or even recently, dreams of being a painter appear frequently, it’s sentimental, there is no obvious connection with my daily life, but this childhood memory still returns to me.
In the view of the visible nature of the relation between manifest dream-content and latent dream-thoughts, we can see a dream of which the different visible or obscure elements are determined by the whole mass of dream-thoughts. We can analyze these elements separately and treat them as they are of small value to dig for the inherent psychical value and signification in the dream-thoughts. In the meantime, dream-displacement and dream-condensation should be considered as two important aspects and influential factors in the formation of the dream.