Illustrated through the iceberg analogy, the manifest content would be identified as the "tip": it is visible above the surface, but implies a large but invisible portion underneath.
Taking advantage of the relaxation of vigilance during sleep, the repressed thoughts are able to partially gain access by associating themselves with non-threatening thoughts and images, primarily by means of what Freud called condensation and displacement.
Freud believed that by uncovering the meaning of one's hidden motivations and deeper ideas, an individual could successfully understand his or her internal struggles, and thus in psychoanalysis the manifest content of the dream is analyzed in order to understand the nature of the latent content.
[4] The technique of free association, utilized by Freud in dream interpretation, often begins with a psychoanalyst's analysis of a specific dream element and the thoughts that automatically come to the analysand's mind in relation to it.
[5] Freud classified five separate processes that facilitate dream analysis.