latent content

noun

Psychoanalysis.

1. the hidden meaning of a fantasy or dream, discoverable by analysis of the content of the dream.

Example Sentences

“The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter In her collection The Bloody Chamber, Carter updated folktales, bringing their “latent content” to the surface to expose their patriarchal assumptions and misogyny.

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By now, widespread disenchantment with Freud’s interpretive code has resulted in a wholesale dismissal of dreams’ latent content.

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I ask them to identify the latent content.

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Just like these other incitors of the dream, the sequence of ideas which the physician sets in motion may appear in the manifest content, or may be traced in the latent content of the dream.

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We should say that while the manifest content of the dream is nonsensical, its true or latent content is usually logical and expressive of some wish that has been suppressed in the waking state.

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