dream imagery with wordplay Does "Freud’s equation of dream imagery with wordplay" mean "Freud's equation for the imagery of dreams by means of words"? Text: As Hiller says, Surrealist painting tended to employ a ‘rebus-like homage to Freud’s equation of dream imagery with wordplay’. Ernst for one employed a method of composition inspired by Freud’s theory of dream formation, his painting Pietà or Revolution by Night, 1923, using one of Freud’s case histories, ‘the Wolf Man’, as one of its sources.