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Besides free association, dream interpretation is another important way to experience the unconscious and the world of symbol. During night sleep, there are usually many dreams. Since a symbol is the language of the unconscious, the psychoanalytic concept of condensation allows for narrowing dream material into one symbolic representation connecting all the nighttime dream elements. It is also a way to understand defense mechanisms, the unconscious adaptive and maladaptive psychological mechanisms that reduces anxiety. The defense mechanism of displacement allows the transfer of an anxiety-provoking object or event to a more tolerable symbol, a cave instead of a vagina or a snake instead of a penis.