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Flournoy recounts a poet's memory from the height of the poet's Oedipal period, of a man swinging on a trapeze, and then gives the short poem into which the poet elaborated this incident. Poems and artistic productions express the same content as daydreams and dreams, but in order to gain social and æsthetic appeal, veil all that is too crude, personal or erotic by the use of methods similar to those of the censorship in dreams (displacement, condensation, symbolic representation). However, they rely especially on another disguise unknown to the dream but specific for art which consists in the special care devoted to form, often involving conscious and sustained effort. The creator of a work of art thus succeeds, by means of stratagems which constitute his technical genius, in removing the stress from the content—which in dreams is of sole importance—and transferring it onto the form. According to the degree of perfection he gives to its form, harmony and arrangement, the work gives pleasure to others and acquires æsthetic value. Its appeal uses the magic of words, and leads to enjoyment resembling forepleasure which is due to the liberation of the contents of the unconscious. Poetry and art differ from ordinary language as a means of expression by their delicacy of expression, which merely sketches in, subtly suggests, and invites us to react.
The special stratagems of form used by poets are rhyme and rhythm, which Flournoy derives from the infant's repetitive, rhythmic pleasure in sucking at the breast and the rhythmic satisfactions involved in learning to walk and in being rocked and swung. In music and the dance particularly, the wild irrational power of instinct is mastered by rhythm and a state of unpleasurable tension converted into pleasurable pulsations.