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[[Dreams]], slips and [[jokes ]] Dreams, [[slips of the tongue]], jokes and [[symptoms ]] all provided [[material ]] for [[Freud]]'s [[model ]] of the [[mind]]. It was on this seemingly trivial foundation - that the [[unconscious ]] could be studied through the messages it sent out - that Freud went on to colonise [[other ]] ostensibly unrelated fields: [[religion]], [[anthropology]], art criticism, [[literary ]] studies. Freud said that dreams are the 'royal road' to the unconscious.9 Dreams have a [[meaning ]] and can be [[interpreted]]: for Freud they are essentially [[symbolic ]] fulfilments of unconscious wishes. They are cast in symbolic forms because if this material were expressed directly then it might be shocking and disturbing enough to wake us up, and so the unconscious conceals, distorts its [[meanings]], so that our dreams become symbolic [[texts ]] which [[need ]] to be deciphered. Dreams, then, arise from an unconscious impulse seeking fulfilment, a [[desire ]] not fulfilled in waking [[life]]. Dreams usually contain material, both from [[recent ]] [[experience ]] (the day's residues) and from distant [[memories ]] involving [[infantile ]] [[sexual ]] wishes. However, the [[censorship]], the force of [[repression]], will not allow these powerfully charged memories to reach [[representation ]] in their original [[form]]. This is why a [[dream ]] is a disguised fulfilment of a [[repressed ]] [[wish]]. Evading censorship by a disguise, the dream is a compromise between the [[demands ]] of impulse and the intensity of the repressing force.lo The dream is not just the 'expression' or 'reproduction' of the unconscious: between the unconscious and the dream a [[process ]] of 'production' or transformation intervenes. The dream itself is the product of an intensive transformation of these [[materials]], known as the 'dream-[[work]]'. The [[dream-work ]] transforms the '[[latent]]' [[content ]] of the dream, the [[forbidden ]] dream-[[thoughts]], into the '[[manifest]]' dream-stories - what the dreamer remembers. The operations of the dream-work take four forms: [[condensation]], [[displacement]], considerations of representability, and secondary reVlSIOn. Condensation is the process in which there is a superimposition of elements; composite [[figures ]] and [[structures ]] are formed so that as little as possible is [[left ]] out. A [[figure ]] can be produced, for example,

The [[Freudian ]] te"ain 7 by uniting the actual features of two or more [[people ]] into a single dream-[[image]]. It is condensation that prevents there [[being ]] any neat one to one correspondence between the elements of the [[manifest content ]] and those of the [[latent content]]. The second [[activity ]] of the dream-work is displacement. The elements in the manifest dream replace elements in the latent dream-thoughts. via a• [[chain ]] of [[associations ]] for the [[purpose ]] of disguise. This results in the intensity of an [[idea ]] becoming detached from it and passing to other [[ideas]], which in themselves are of little [[value]]. Both condensation and displacement can produce [[visual ]] and auditory [[images ]] for abstract thoughts, thus contributing to the actual process of representation in dreams. Considerations of representability, the way the dream-thoughts achieve representation in the dream via images, is the [[third ]] activity of the dream-work. Representation is rather like a rebus (a picturepuzzle), a series of ideograms or pictographs. Freud writes that there are dreams in which the most complicated [[intellectual ]] operations take [[place]], statements are contradicted or confirmed, ridiculed or compared, just as they are in waking [[thought]]. Even the most abstract thoughts are transposed with great ingenuity into imagery by the [[dream work]]. For example, dreams reproduce [[logical ]] connection by simultaneity in [[time]]. Here they are acting like a painter of the [[School ]] of Athens or Parnassus who represents J in one group all the [[philosophers ]] or all the poets. It is [[true ]] that they were never in fact assembled in a single hall or on a single mountain-top; but they certainly form a group in the [[conceptual ]] [[sense]]. The [[analyst ]] is not the first interpreter of the dream: in narrating a dream the dreamer already [[acts ]] as his or her own biased interpreter. One [[stage ]] of the dream-work, known as 'secondary revision', consists in the reorganisation of the dream so as to [[present ]] it in the form of a relatively consistent and comprehensible [[narrative]]. Secondary revision systematises the dream, fills in its gaps and smooths over its contradictions, reorders its chaotic elemerits into a more coherent fable. Secondary revision is at work when the dream is presented in the form of a [[verbal ]] account. The [[conscious ]] mind prefers to put the [[irrational ]] dream-sequence into recognisable and familiar logical [[order]], involving a further [[distortion ]] of the 'distortion' already achieved by the other mechanisms discussed above.ll 8 Jacques [[Lacan ]] Dreams provide our main, but not our only, access to the unconscious. There are also what Freud calls '[[parapraxes]]', unaccountable slips of the tongue, failures of [[memory]], misreadings which can be traced to unconscious wishes and intentions. So important did Freud [[think ]] these apparently casual accidents that in 1901 he wrote a [[whole ]] book on the [[subject]], The [[Psychopathology ]] of Everyday Life. In 1905 Freud published a work on the subject of jokes or of wit. Although appearing some time after The [[Interpretation ]] of Dreams and [[The Psychopathology of Everyday Life]], the book can, be seen as being directly related to [[them]], and as being a product of the same period and concerns. As with his earlier work on dreams and- slips, Freud spent some time classifying jokes and then eXplaining how each type - [[word ]] plays, puns, jests, innocent jokes, tendentious ones involving [[obscenity ]] or hostility - could be rendered intelligible in [[terms ]] of the release in [[psychic ]] [[energy ]] they produced. Just as the [[mechanism ]] of dreams served as a means whereby dammed-up [[psychic energy ]] could be released harmlessly, so jokes fulfilled a similar function. The mechanism of repression can be outwitted in the process of joking, and the suppressed desire can find [[partial ]] fulfilment, thereby producing a measure of [[satisfaction]].