Everyone in the world has had at least one dream in their lifetime. Most people don’t think much about the dreams they have, unless they are recurring. Most people today wake up from a dream or nightmare saying, “thank heaven that was a dream,” or “too bad that was just a dream.” Many times these dreams or nightmares have more meaning than we think.
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
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He also worried that his patients would leave out parts of their dreams if they found them to be embarrassing or private and that they would forget much of their dreams upon waking. Dreams rarely make sense to the waking mind, and his patients might lie or add things later that would justify or bring understanding to their dreams.
Freud felt that he must rely upon his own dreams because of the difficulties of studying other people’s dreams. This was also a problem because he felt that he would then have to reveal his own private thoughts to the world. Freud states, “But if I was to report my own dreams, it inevitably followed that I should have to reveal to the public gaze more of the intimacies of my mental life than I liked, or that is normally necessary for any writer who is a man of science and not a poet. “ Having decided that he would willingly share his dreams and feelings for his studies he then expresses, “I can only express the hope that the readers of this book will put themselves in my difficult situation and treat me with indulgence”.
By studying the ideas of other psychologists and philosophers to support his own ideas, Freud was able to take the parts he agreed with and disprove the parts he did not agree with. He explores the ideas of Aristotle, Hildebrandt and Strumpell to name just a few. He agreed strongly with Aristotle’s belief that dreams are not divine in
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).
In his lecture, “Revision of the Theory of Dreams” Freud makes it apparent that this theory alone stands as the basis for the entirety of Psycho-Analysis, he writes, “Whenever I begin to have doubts of the correctness of my wavering conclusions, the successful transformation of a senseless and muddled dream into a logical and intelligible
In his book, Modern Man In Search Of A Soul, C.G. Jung gives a layman knowledge into his thoughts on dream investigation. Jung 's essential goal in this book is to instruct the peruser in the matter of what a psychoanalyst does while breaking down a patient 's fantasies. The vital message in the book focused on dream investigation is that fantasies ought to never remain solitary. Dreams are inane in a vacuum, however then again when set against a strict arrangement of guidelines, they are generally misconstrued. The oblivious is a liquid substance and can 't be taken care of either in segregation or with a static arrangement of rules. Dreams are impressions of the oblivious and can speak to various things within a man. Present day Man In
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.
In 1900 the eminent Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud produced a seminal work entitled The Interpretation of Dreams which contains the idea that dreams allow psychic exploration of the soul, that dreams contain psychological meanings which can be arrived at by interpretation. Freud states that “every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state.” According to Freud’s original formulations dreams have two contents, a manifest content which is the dream that one actually experiences and a latent content which is the meaning of the dream as discovered by
Sigmund Freud’s On Dream was a very interesting read because it taught a lot about his views and ideas on how dreams work. Throughout the book, Freud is analysing a dream he has where a woman who was not his wife is having dinner with him. She tells him that he has pretty eyes and put her hand on his knee. Later on, she tries to feed him spinach. By the end, Freud has explained what he believes to be the meaning behind the dream. Freud believes that the dream meant that he wants to find love but not having to work to find it.
dreams. Freud believed that analysing dreams could be a way of accessing the unconscious mind
Freud introduced the concept of using dream interpretation to understand the unconscious mind. He was convicted that the way 'to understanding and treating neurosis' (Kahn, 2002. Pg. 155) was through dreams. Dream interpretation is another technique used by psychoanalyst to assist the client in understanding and helping them gain insight into their unconscious mind. Freud suggested that dreams, both day and night, represent a wish that the client could like fulfilled (Kahn, 2002).
Around this time Freud began a self-analysis, carefully analyzing his own dreams. “Freud saw dreams as pieces and hints about the unconscious” (Friedman & Schustack,
To many people, dreams are the thoughts that occur while sleeping, having almost mystic qualities. For millennia the significance of dreams has escaped even the brightest of philosophers and intellectuals. Many people have speculated about why people dream and what meanings the dreams have but in recent times two theories have gained credibility in answering those questions. The first theory is Sigmund Freuds and the other is known as the cognitive theory of dreams also known as biological determinism.
Freud analyzed many of his own dreams recorded in the 3-year period of his self-analysis,
He was able to dig deeper into the dream in order to figure out what it was about or why someone was having a certain dream. Freud was successful throughout all of the theories. Freud believed that every little idea or item had a possible meaning. For example, seeing a picture in a dream would have a possible meaning that something could happen with the picture the next day. An impressive part of Freud's work, was taking small ideas and making them have a bigger meaning by asking questioning about the ideas, in order to find their possible meaning. When someone had a dream, Freud would want the person to discuss their dreams and their thoughts and hopes in order to see if there was a deeper meaning behind the action that was thought of. Freud created a new view on dreams and thoughts by understanding the superego and the tools that were used. Freud created many great benefits for the
Sigmund Freud’s big legacy was his work with dreams and the unconscious. This work can relate to literature on a large scale. In our textbook, we learn that
Third, Sigmund Freud thought dreams had motives and there meaning is other than it appears on the surface. Dreams are disguised by condensation and displacement. Condensation is a thought expressed in the optative has been replaced by a representation in the present tense” (Freud, 151). In simpler terms, dream condensation is complex meaning compressed into a simpler one. While “dream displacement is concealing the meaning of a dream and to make the connections between the dream content and the dream thoughts unrecognisable” (Freud, 155). When we rationalise this, it is merely stating that dream content is derived from the dream thoughts and when an individual awakes the content of the dream may not be clear due to condensation and displacement. Often with dream displacement, for the dream content to be clear there has to be a linkage to something that corresponds to it. Freud also stated that, “we assume as a matter of course that the most distinct element in the manifest content of dream is the most important one; but in fact owing to displacement that has occurred it is often an indistinct element which turns out to be the most direct derivative of the essential dream thoughts” (Freud, 155). This shows that it is not the content of the dream, which is remembered, that is most significant but the
Sigmund Freud is thought to be the founder of psychoanalysis and he embarked on conducting a study to analyse and interpret dreams as a means of determining their relation to the human psyche. Starting off his career as a neurologist he was already very familiar with the brain and it’s inner workings. However his study was specifically conducted to explore the more celestial attributes of the mind and apply scientific theory and neurological practice. Freud said that, "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." He meant that because dreams are such an unconscious activity they give an almost direct insight into the workings of the unconscious mind. In "The Interpretation of Dreams" he was the first person to look at the mind and to develop a theory about its basis and creation. By identifying which parts of the mind are unconscious and conscious he was able to fix scientific labels on celestial areas of the brain. In effect, Freud is responsible for giving the study of the mind it’s serious and scientific attributes. Something that had only previously associated with the physical study of the brain. In order to prove his theory he analyzed his dreams, his childhood memories, screen memories, slips of the tongue, and episodes of forgetfulness. His theory was that by analyzing dreams and memories they will aid in trying to understand how events from the past, including childhood, continue to actively influence