e have such dreams. Immediately upon waking only
so much of the dream is remembered, that is, put into ordinary speech,
as will square with our life at the time. The dream is "censored," in
other words.

The question immediately arises, who is the censor or what part of us
does the censoring? The Freudians have made more or less of a
"metaphysical entity" out of the censor. They suppose that when wishes
are repressed, they are repressed into the "unconscious," and that this
mysterious censor stands at the trapdoor lying between the conscious and
the unconscious. Many of us do not believe in a world of the unconscious
(a few of us even have grave doubts about the usefulness of the term
consciousness), hence we try to explain censorship along ordinary
biological lines. We believe that one group of habits can "down" another
group of habits--or instincts. In this case our ordinary system of
habits--those which we call expressive of our "real selves"--inhibit or
quench (keep inactive or partially inactive) those habits and
instinctive tendencies which belong largely in the past.

This conception of the dream as having both censored and uncensored
features has led us to divide the dream into its specious or manifest
content (face value, which is usually nonsensical) and its latent or
logical content. 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.

On examination the manifest content of dreams is found to be full of
symbols. As long as the dream does not have to be put into customary
language, it is allowed to stand as it is dreamed--the symbolic features
are uncensored. Symbolism is much more common than is ordinarily
supposed. All early language was symbolic. The language of children and
of savages abounds in symbolism. Symbolic modes of expression both in
art and in literature are among the earliest forms of treating difficult
situations in delicate and inoffensive ways. In other words, symbols in
art are a necessity and serve the same purpose as does the censor in the
dreams. Even those of us who have not an artistic education, however,
have become familiar with the commoner forms of symbolism through our
acquaintance with literature. In the dream, when the more finely
controlled physiological processes are in abeyance, there is a tendency
to revert to the symbolic modes of e