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Visual representation is characteristic of the dream and is a primitive form of thinking. Concepts which do not lend themselves to visual representation are forced by the dream process into visual form.
The author seeks to demonstrate that the images in the dream, like figures in heraldry, are chosen unconsciously for their phonetic associations. In heraldry, for example, an owl (French: duc) represents the name Duke. The Dutch name Hart can be represented by a heart (Dutch: hart) or by a deer (Dutch: hert). In dreams a similar device is used.
Condensation in the dream results from the necessity for phonetic association. Unreal combinations are attempts to correct imperfect phonetic associations. The dream censor is identical with the moral critic of consciousness and is responsible for the substitution of images of a harmless character for sexual organs and their functions. The dream is an autonomous dynamic expression of human activity, not merely a wish fulfilment. The task of the psychotherapist is not the search for dynamically represented latent content but the exploration of the thoughts that are reproduced by the primitive visual mechanisms, which use phonetically associated elements rather than affectively associated ones.
This ill-written demonstration that phonetic association is the basic ingredient of the dream is a poor challenge to the supremacy of The Interpretation of Dreams.