Latent

Latent dream thoughts (latent content) are the meanings psychoanalytic interpretation discovers in the manifest dream (the narrative the dreamer constructs of his dream).

Freud introduced the contrast between manifest and latent in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), and he never abandoned this distinction, as witness An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940a [1938]).

Latent thoughts (also called by Freud "dream thoughts" or "latent content") are primary; they are the motor of the dream. They are comprised of infantile...