Latent dream thoughts (latent content) are the meanings psychoanalytic interpretation discovers in the manifest dream (the narrative the dreamer constructs of his dream).

Freud introduced the contrast between manifest and latent in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), and he never abandoned this distinction, as witness An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940a [1938]).

Latent thoughts (also called by Freud "dream thoughts" or "latent content") are primary; they are the motor of the dream. They are comprised of infantile memories—of "egoistic," sexual, or incestuous contents—which because of their moral unacceptability are rejected by the censorship. They are marked by the primary processes (condensation, displacement, figurability) and undergo the "distortions" that constitute the "dream work."

Unconscious latent thoughts—the demands of the drives and their prohibition—are the foundation of the...