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Freud has shown that phantasies of the waking imagination are only restrained dreams, and that condensation of affective mental processes as well as displacement of affective accent takes place in phantasy as well as in dreams. The landscapes of dreams condense several landscapes marked by a common emotion. This composite landscape symbolizes the common emotion holding it together. Every work of art, like every dream, is symbolic; it represents a work of unconscious objective intention and personal emotions. Psycho-analysis is an incitement to a new art of symbolism and phantasy as instanced in the work of Franz Werfel. Because feeling condenses images into a new image, it might be said that sensibility alone is truly creative. Intellect ensures adaptation to reality, and imagination ensures adaptation of reality to ourselves. Art, on this account, is a vital function. In Art, just as in the dream, the Freudian idea of repression is a defence-reflex. The painful 'affect' is displaced and becomes weakened.
The relationship between play and the dream as put forward by Flournoy and Claparede is destined to become increasingly important. Play is the discharge of instincts in formation. This is compared with the dream, which is also a discharge of suppressed instincts. Therefore displacement possesses besides disguise a real function of play. The game is a mimic dream, and between the game and the dream there are all the intermediate phases. Art synthesizes the game and the dream; it expresses a vital force dissatisfied with certain objects and seeking others. The noblest art is defined as Humanity's dream of orientation in the quest of its own soul.