This free change of psychic energy is characteristic of so-called primary processes, which do not function with the aim of mental identity, but rather aim to fulfill pleasure, even self-deception to a certain extent, in order to make life easier, i.e. to avoid unpleasant and harmful things: a camouflage, reinterpretation, reconnection of disliked perceptions or memories.
However, condensations can also be the determining factor for misperceptions, the psychoenergetic dynamics of which are not free-flowing, as certain external and internal motives are also involved.
Images and chains of association have their emotional charges displaced from the originating ideas to the receiving one, where they merge and "condense" together.
[4] Freud saw the same mechanism of condensation at work in phantasies and neurotic symptoms,[5] as well as in parapraxis and jokes: he often cited as an instance Heine's quip about the rich man treating him 'famillionairily'.
Comparing the linguistic evidence to Freud's account of the dream-work, Jakobson saw symbolism as relating to metaphor, condensation, and displacement to metonymy.