Dream and Interpretation

On the rare occasions in which it is even briefy possible to examine the content of a dream experience, in evidence are two main components: images, and a description.  Now, usually in dream interpretation, the relation of the images to the description is conceived as mediated by recognition--an image is taken as resembling some other images that are well-defined, and, so, classified as the latter.  However, the images in a dream are actually very unclear and indistinct, which means that recognition cannot explain how they can be easily associated with any other.  So, it is perhaps possible that the images are the products of the terms, not vice versa.  Anyway, at minimum, the classification is problematic, suggesting that the first stage of 'dream interpretation' is the process of image-classification itself, and, thus, that a study of the experience must first explain that stage.  Once that is established, the task of the psychoanalyst is to diagnose the classification, i. e. to explain why one associates those vague images with specific more definite previous ones, an obviously very difficult task.  In any case, what is commonly conceived by 'dream interpretation' is actually an interpretation of an interpretation of some vague images.  For example, the interpretation of 'someone dreaming about a cigar' is, more fundamentally, that of 'someone calling a dream-image a "cigar"'.  One implication of such an analysis is that it renders more implausible a cardinal Freudian thesis that a dream-image might be the product of symbolization, a difficult implication to refute.