Freud's Framework of Dreams The purpose of dreams is to sleep. Dreams also represent wish fulfillment. A dream is the result of a mediation or compromise between these two opposing forces. Freud defines the manifest content of dreams as that which an individual is dreaming in a particular dream, its primarily apparent subject matter. In contradistinction to manifest dreams Freud differentiates latent dream content, the elements composing the true purpose or meaning of a dream. Through dream analysis one can unravel the manifest dream content in order to arrive at the dream's meaning, which is embodied in the latent dream content, and is termed as the dream-t