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Term used in [[psychoanalysis]] to describe the mechanisms that transform the raw materials of a dream into its [[manifest content]].Typically the raw materials will include [[physical ]] stimuli, day's residues (elements from the dayu's waking [[state ]] that appear either in the dream itself or in the dreamer's [[free association]]s) and dream-[[thought ]] ([[latent content]]). 

 Considerations of representability select, transform and [[censor ]] dream-[[thoughts ]] so as to allow [[them ]] to be represented - usually in the [[form ]] of [[visual ]] [[images ]] - whilst secondary revision arranges them into a relatively coherent scenario or [[narrative]]. The [[dream-work]] does not create anything and merely transform existing [[material]]. It is the [[dream-work]] and not the [[latent content]] that constitutes the [[essence ]] of a [[dream]]. [[Freud ]] introduced the [[notion ]] of "dream work" to clearly emphasize that the dream is not the result, as was generally thought to be the [[case]], of a weakened state of [[mental ]] [[activity ]] producing incoherent fragments, but, on the contrary, the outcome of very [[complex ]] [[psychic ]] work. This was the notion that was articulated in ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams ]]'' (1900a), based on a fundamental hypothesis: the dream represents a fulfillment of desires that are [[repressed ]] in waking [[life]], but this realization is typically disguised so as to [[pass ]] through [[censorship ]] during [[sleep]]. The "dream work" is [[responsible ]] for this disguise. The "materials" used in this [[process ]] are essentially of two types: residues of the day, that is to say "mnemonic traces" of events, thoughts, affects, etc., of waking life (usually [[recent]]), and [[bodily ]] sensations during sleep (hunger, thirst, [[pain]], etc., but particularly [[erotic ]] [[excitation]]).  The source of the dream, however, is to be found in conflicts and wishes of childhood—oedipal childhood—[[oedipal]] conflicts prominent among them .  The dream work proceeds in two phases. The first phase is that of the primary processes: "condensation," resulting in compressing into a single image disparate, even contradictory material (events, personages, representations, affects, etc.); "displacement," whereby an affectively neutral representation is substituted for another, and finally visual imagery is primarily the mode of representation for thoughts, affects, and sensation.  There is the passage into images itself, or "representability": the dream is made up of essentially visual sensorial images.  

 The first [[phase ]] of the dream produces the [[manifest ]] [[content]], which is the unrecognizable [[translation ]] of the "[[latent ]] thoughts" that can be made [[conscious ]] through [[analysis]].  However, the manifest content has to be subjected to a secondary revision upon awakening in [[order ]] to create a superficial [[coherence ]] in the remembered and repeated dream. It is significant that while Freud described these primary and secondary [[processes ]] as the two phases of the dream work, he also considered them as the two processes governing mental activity: the "primary processes," characterized by the free flowing of an unbound [[energy]]; and "secondary processes," dominated by [[rational ]] [[intellectual ]] activity and [[bound energy]].  Consequently, there is a wide chasm between the primary and secondary processes that can be revealed by dissection of the dream work (Neyraut, 1978, 1997).

* [[dream]]* [[primary Primary process]]* [[secondary Secondary process]]