t through language but through metaphors or symbols which mean something other than as they appear, much as they do in poetical use, “The dream thoughts which we first come across as we proceed with our analysis often strike us by the unusual form in which they are expressed; they are not clothed in the prosaic language usually employed by our thoughts, but are on the contrary represented symbolically by means of similes and metaphors, in images resembling those of poetic speech” (Freud, 1980: 39). These pictorial representations are, in actuality, a manifestation of our unconscious. In other words, the symbols represent a desire we have suppressed or repressed. Yet, everything comprising the content of the dream represents a meaningful experience we have had in the waking state for dreams present nothing new. Often this expression of symbolic pictures is a sort of wish fulfillment for something we cannot attain in waking life.
While most of Freud’s dream theory centered on the sexual nature of symbols within dreams, he admitted that dreams and their symbols might be other than phallic in nature. For various reasons, the conscious desires of the id or superego may be repressed from the conscious mind because of various reasons. For example, childhood memories of being raped are often repressed or suppressed because the ego acts like a defense shield to protect the conscious mind from trauma. Defense mechanisms keep undesirable conscious thoughts in the unconscious portions of the psyche and include such processes as rationalization, denial, reaction formation, regression, displacement and repression. The symbols in our dreams represent the repressed wishes or desires we have, or painfully repressed memories or episodes in our past. When we deal with our unconscious thoughts in a rational manner they are brought into conscious awareness and the energy of them is discharged freeing the individuals from internal psychi...