Ideologies contain and articulate psychological meanings. How may one decipher the latent content of ideological texts? My method, analysis of metaphor, consists of identifying recurring images and figures of speech in the writings and speeches of individuals who have been significant in defining and promoting an ideology for  a group, revealing the fantasies that the ideology seeks to articulate.

Ideologies structure and externalize fantasies shared by members of a group. An ideology is like manifest content of a dream—that many people are having at the same time.

The psychological study of culture focuses—not on the idiosyncrasies of individuals—but upon how shared desires, fantasies, anxieties and conflicts give rise to collective representations.