As we noted earlier, Freud's point of departure is that there is no pre-given code for interpreting a dream. It is perhaps because Freud showed how a dream stretched language and interpretation to the limit that his work has become influential in fields outside psychoanalysis dealing with the interpretation of texts To understand the significance of disguise and distortion in dreams, Freud shows that it is also necessary to understand the role of repression. Repression, of course, is very closely linked with the unconscious. And unconscious dream thoughts are what are repressed. However, in the wake of the work of Jacques Lacan, a more structural interpretation has been given to repression.
Repression here is associated with the very formation of the subject in language and the symbolic.
It would be what makes possible the very distinction between subject and object. The former appears inexplicable to the subject, and the latter often escapes consciousness altogether. In both cases the aim becomes one of interpreting the symptom and the repetition, thereby confirming, and perhaps expanding, the domain of the symbolic. Freud, of course, is also known as the formulator of the concept of the Oedipus complex. A related theme emerges in Totem and Taboo, where Freud refers to the myth of the killing and devouring of the violent father in Darwin's primal horde.