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An essential aspect of the workings of the unconscious and especially of dream-work, as described by psychoanalysis.
A single idea or image in a dream may represent the nnodal point at which a number of chains of associations or ideas intersect, and can thus be a condensation of both their multiple unconscious meaning and their quota of affect or emotional charge.
The mechanism of condensation explains why the manifest content of a dream is often so laconic or fragmentary: it is an abridged translation of the latent content.
The second basis mechanism of the dream-work is displacement.
Both mechanisms can be observed in other unconscious formations, and notably in symptoms of hysteria and neurosis; they are also important featurres of jokes.
Following jakobson, Lacan likes condensation and displacement to the linguistic mechanisms of [[metaphor]] and [[metonymy]].
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