Critical Commentary On Freud 's ' The Dream Work '

It is universally known that dreams are full of meanings and emotions. In Freud’s theory, all dreams are wish fulfillments or at least attempts at wish fulfillment. The dreams are usually presented in an unrecognizable form because the wishes are repressed. Freud proposes there are two levels in the structure of dreams, the manifest contents and the latent dream-thoughts. The manifest dream, a dream

The point of view of which Freud interprets and examines the manifest of dreams content to obtain their latent meaning is of a professional psychologist and clinical observer who looked for a way to explain how our minds work and how the individual psychology functions. He based his work on clinical experiences and clinical neurosis of the matter of his own interpretations to be able to confirm his theories as a proven fact. The result Freud gets from the patients he observes and interpretation of their dreams are stereotyped to the complete human condition.

Freud found two meanings in a dream: the manifest meaning and the latent meaning (Freud 168). The manifest meaning of a dream is what is remembered upon waking (Felluga). The manifest meaning can reflect a situation that follows common sense and unfold in a way possible in waking life. Other times it can take its own wild path that follows little or no logical sequence when viewed at surface level. Despite this vast difference, both of these are influenced by the superego, a part of the mind that Freud believes houses the knowledge of the structure of society and what is acceptable in the dreamers culture. The dream takes place on a stage or backdrop that makes sense and relates to waking life (Freud 216-17). While the manifest meaning is useful and can itself contain a message, interpretation of it can reveal more than seen at face value.

Freud’s wish fulfillment theory began because he believed that the wishes in adult dreams were disguised in order to reduce their anxiety tendencies. Freud theorised that dreams are disguised by a “censor” of sorts, in four cognitive processes he collectively called the “dream-work” (Freud, 1900) these include; displacement, whereby highly charged thoughts are transferred to minor elements in the impending dream. Condensation then compresses several different dream thoughts. These two are then joined together by the regard for representability, which changes abstract thoughts into a form that is applicable for the sensor. Finally the dream is shaped by secondary revision which basically gives the dream content an understandable pattern. (Freud, 1900).

Freud also listed the following results from his studies, dreams can have multiple layers of meaning, nearly all dreams are wish-fulfilling, and all dreams have a unifying motive that accounts for all random images and events. Freud concluded that dreams are the way an individual 's unconscious mind tries to express itself and that dreams “may only have a chance of reaching our consciousness if they are somewhat disguised”. Which explains the sometimes absurd and bizarre dreams that someone can get. Sigmund Freud uses the following analogy to explain his theory, “a political writer may criticize a ruler, but in doing so may endanger himself. The writer therefore has to fear the ruler’s censorship, and in doing so “moderates and distorts the expression of his opinion”. The writer serves to represent the unconscious mind, while the ruler is the conscious mind that stops an individual from doing certain things. Dreams and daydreams are practically synonymous, except dreams occur when an individual sleeps, and daydreams are when the person is awake, but both allow for the mind to wander, so the theory can apply to both, but Freud mainly focuses on the aspects of dreams.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Dover Thrift Editions. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2015.

After a friend told me about some weird dreams he had been having I decided to research the meaning of dreams. I will focus on Sigmund Freud’s idea that understanding our dreams can help us to understand ourselves, and live a much happier and fulfilled life. Freud was known as “the father of psychoanalysis” and in 1899 he wrote his most famous work, The Interpretation of Dreams, and

Have you ever had a dream that you had no idea what it meant? In the essay Excerpts from “On Dream” Freud discusses dream symbolism. He states that the dream thought we first come across, we proceed without analysis we often think those dreams are unusual. He goes on by saying that our dreams are employed by our thoughts. “The content of dreams, however, does not consist entirely of situations, but also includes disconnected fragments of visual images, speeches and even bits of unmodified thoughts.” This quote explains why I dream about that scary little girl from the horror movie commercial. We dream what we see throughout our day. Dreams seem to be composed of more than one experience or impression. “Wishful fantasies which are present

By analyzing dreams, Freud believed that it could lead to understanding the most mysterious part of the human body: the brain. He viewed dreams as the unconscious mind making an endeavor to resolve a conflict regardless of when the conflict arose (Freud, 1900, p.577). Freud eventually developed a theory that the symbols and images in dreams may only be the front for multiple connotations, linking icons in dreams to parts of the body and biological drives. The dreamer may “find the top part of a clarinet in the street or the mouth-piece of a tobacco-pipe” in response to stimuli from male sexual organs (Freud, 1900, p.111). Freud argued in many of his early works that many latent dreams are sexual in nature. These connections separated Freud from his colleagues, such as Carl

“Dreams are a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.” This is the true definition of what dreams are according to Free Dictionary.com. Although many people are unaware of how dreams actually work there are two psychologists that have been able to pinpoint the true meaning of dreams. These two men are Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. There are many different perceptions on how people dream, what dreams mean, and why people dream.

Freud’s theory is that dreaming is meaningful, unlike the activation synthesis theory. He believed that the mind had three sections, represented in a shape of an iceberg; the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious. The conscious is the tip of the iceberg above the water involves everything we are aware of right now such as our thoughts. The

We can say that when dreaming, we jump to a different world plenty of our deepest feelings and sensations. Despite the fact that we do not always remember all the details of our dreams or even do not recall them at all, it is certain that dreams are part of us. This mixture of images, feelings, and thoughts can tell us much about our inner-self and give us a hint of what is happening inside our minds. The author Ed Struzik in his article “Sweet dreams; A mirror of our most intimate secrets or just a random bombardment of brain signals: [FINAL Edition]” makes reference to Sigmund Freud, one the first persons to study the science of dreams, suggesting that “dreams revealed our most intimate secrets, and are a method by which stress and psychological

Freud believed that dreams represent repressed desires, dears and conflicts. He distinguished two aspects of dreams: the manifest content (Actual event) and the latent content (symbolic meaning of the event). In Freud’s latent content all of the symbolic meanings had a sexual background. He viewed dreams as revealing conflicts in a condensed and intensified form.

In his book, Modern Man In Search Of A Soul, C.G. Jung gives a layperson insight into his ideas on dream analysis. Jung's primary objective in this book is to educate the reader as to what a psychoanalyst does when analyzing a patient's dreams. The principal message in the section of the book centered on dream analysis is that dreams should never stand alone. Dreams are meaningless in a vacuum, but on the other hand when put against a strict set of rules, they are oftentimes misunderstood. The unconscious is a fluid entity and cannot be handled either in isolation or with a static set of guidelines. Dreams are reflections of the unconscious and can represent many different things inside of

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, takes the audience on a wild and confusing ride through the human unconscious. From the play within the play, to fairies causing mayhem, what is to be considered reality? The notion of falling asleep and dreaming is introduced over and over in the play, and leaves the audience wondering, is any of this real? Throughout this paper, I will attempt to explain the parallels between Shakespeare’s work, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the work of the Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud, whose most popular work is that of dreams and dream interpretations.