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In a previous article,1 an observed affinity between slang words and dream symbols was used to argue for Freud's theory of the representability of dream symbols and against his theory of the symbol as disguise. “If slang and dream symbols coincide as closely as they do, and if the referents of slang are as well known as they are, how can these same expressions or visualizations of them function effectively as disguises in dreams?” Why should a dreamer deceive himself during sleep with the same symbols which he employs during waking life?
I then proceeded to set forth an elaboration of Freud's theory of representability and called it a cognitive theory of dream symbols. The basic idea of the theory is that a dream symbol represents or expresses a conception of a thing or activity (the referent) which is being symbolized, or as I prefer to say now, a dream symbol is a fantasy representation of the referent object or activity. My preference for fantasy over conception is that the word conception has too much of an intellectual-ego language connotation whereas fantasy designates the emotional, impulsive, and pictorial roots of symbol-making. Gun, for example, symbolizes an aggressive, threatening fantasy of the penis, faucet represents a mechanical phallic fantasy, and banana stands for an oral fantasy. Symbols in dreams and metaphors in waking life are translated not in order to penetrate disguises but to discover and understand the nature of a person's fantasies about himself and the world.