Condensation

“The notion that dreams provide an avenue for the expression of normally repressed desires while simultaneously disguising and censoring our real urges was systematically formulated by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. In Freud’s view, the purpose of dreams is to allow us to satisfy in fantasies the instinctual urges that society judges to be unacceptable in some way, such as the urge to seduce or to kill. If, however, we were to dream about an actual seduction or an actual assault, the emotions evoked by the dream would awaken us. So that our sleep is not continually disturbed by such dreams, the mind modifies and disguises their content so that strong emotions are not evoked. Freud referred to the process of censoring and transforming dream contents into less disturbing images as the dream and explicitly identified five processes through which dreams are censored:  Visualisation displacement, condensation, symbolisation, projection, and secondary revision.

Condensation, as the word implies, is a process that disguises a particular thought, urge, or emotion by contracting it into a brief dream event or image, the -deeper meaning of which is not readily evident. Condensation also refers to the tendency of the dreamwork to bring together two or more different experiences or concerns into a single dream narrative or image. In Freud’s words,

From every element in a dream’s content associative threads branch out in two or more directions; every situation in a dream seems to be put together out of two or more impressions or experiences. (pp. 4l-2)

The overlap of two or more distinct sets of associations in one dream situation effectively disguises the true meaning of the dream”.

Quoted from THE  DREAM  ENCYCLOPAEDIA by James R. Lewis