Essay Psychology of Dreams

He explained dreams as manifestations of our deepest desires and anxieties, often relating to repressed childhood memories or obsessions. Furthermore, he believed that virtually every dream topic, regardless of its content, represented the release of sexual tension. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Freud developed a psychological technique to interpret dreams and devised a series of guidelines to understand the symbols and motifs that appear in our dreams. Opinions about the meaning of dreams have varied and shifted through time and culture. Most people today appear to endorse Freud’s theory of dreams that dreams reveal insight into hidden desires and emotions. Other prominent theories include those suggesting that dreams assist in memory formation, problem solving, or simply are a product of random brain activation. The earliest recorded dreams were acquired from materials dating back approximately 5000 years, in Mesopotamia, where they were documented on clay tablets. In the Greek and Roman periods, the people believed that dreams were direct messages

The best part of a long, hard-working day is when you finally get to lay in your bed, close your eyes and let your imagination run free. As you sleep your mind takes you to another place far away from the real world. You begin to dream. Over the night, you may have several dreams. In the morning, you may wake up and wonder what your dreams were suppose to mean for you and your life. By analyzing your dream, it "gives a true picture of the 'subjective state'-how we really feel about ourselves-which the conscious mind cannot or will not give" (Wietz 289). In order to find the meaning of a dream, you have to pick out the most important symbols and define them. But you may be wondering what exactly is a symbol?

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).

This reflective essay illustrates Freud’s theory of dream analysis. It will begin with a brief overview of Freudian dream theory and will go on to describe the various components of personality structure and the unconscious from a psychodynamic perspective. This essay will analyse one of my personal dreams using Freud’s dream analysis theory and conclude with a critical reflection on the application of his theory as it relates to my dream.

Consequently, to study Freud one must investigate his theory of manifest content and latent content. While reading Freud, a student learns that the actual content of the dream is referred to as manifest content. That is to say, the exact subject matter of the dream is the manifest content. At the same time, Freud believed that the latent content was the true meaning of a dream. The latent content appears to be left open to personal interpretations. It was Freud’s belief that dreams come from deep in the unconscious mind. Perhaps even from things suppressed since childhood. Freud studied dreams as a means of psychoanalyzing people and believed dreams were a kind of wish fulfillment. The view Freud took explained dreams as a window into an individual’s unconscious including their deepest desires and anxieties. In 1931 Freud wrote, as quoted in Schön (2016), “The Interpretation of Dreams . . . contains the most valuable of all the dream interpretation in theory discoveries it has been my fortune to make” (76-77). Dr. Freud was proud of his literary contributions to society. In today’s world dreams might be considered a pathway to a person’s true thoughts, actions and

Many people believe their dreams are a manifestation of their subconscious. Dream analysis is the process of evaluating dreams to determine their meaning. The process of analyzing ones dreams dates back to ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptian people believed dreams were a message from the Gods. Furthermore, in the 20th century Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung gave way to greater scientific advancements through developed scientific theories and disciplines. Freud believed that dreams were the unconscious mind hiding repressed wants and desires from the conscious mind to protect the conscious mind from disturbing thoughts. However, Jung who at the time was a colleague of Freud’s disagreed. Jung thought that dreams were a means for the unconscious mind to bring to light inner desires to the conscious mind. In either case, by analyzing dreams a person has

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

Another dream theory is the psychoanalytic perspective, which is a part of Freud’s theory, are dreams that are a representation of the unconscious motivations, desires, and thoughts. The thoughts are consciously expressed and also suggested that we find the way into the awareness through

The Meaning of the Dream in Psychoanalysis. State University of New York Press, 2002. SUNY Series in Dream Studies. EBSCOhost, library.lavc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=90330&site=eds-live.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist best known for developing the theories and techniques of psychoanalysis. Freud's studies, theories and techniques have had more impact on the world of psychology than any other single person in history and is widely recognized as one of it's founding fathers. His most well known and successful proposal is the theory of dream interpretation. Freud believes that dreams represent wish fulfillment, unconscious desires, and conflicts. When dreaming these repressed issues of our waking life come forth. Dreams contain both manifest and latent content. Manifest content includes information of the dreams, or in other words the literal main subject from the dream as the dreamer remembers it. Latent content represents

Are your dreams really meaningful, or are they just an appearance in your sleep? This is a common question that many of us tend to overlook. “Are dreams really meaningful?” by Kelly Bulkeley and “Why dreams mean less than we think.” by John cloud, are two insights that will help in gaining knowledge about the meanings of our dreams. The scientists around the globe have been researching our meanings behind our dreams for quite some time now, “The findings from these studies provide compelling evidence that dreaming is not meaningless “noise” but rather a coherent and sophisticated mode of psychological functioning.” (Bulkeley). Although many researchers claim that dreams are just our imagination going to sleep, or our brain replaying past and

Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams suggested that dreams represented unconscious desires, thoughts, and motivations. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic view of personality,

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, titled his landmark work, The Interpretation of Dreams. He asserted that every dream is the fulfillment of a wish. Imagine, for example, one who is sleeping but who becomes thirsty. The sleep pattern will be disturbed by thirst. A subsequent dream will likely involve liquids in an attempt to get rid of the disturbance. Only when the dream fails, will you wake and visit the kitchen.

All of the approaches to understanding dreams reflect the movement of societal thought. The initial beliefs involved gods, temples, and faith. At the times when the cultural beliefs on dreams were established the explanations for most worldly events involved these elements. As time passed society, particularly Western society, became more individual oriented. With this came the psychological approaches to dreams. These approaches reflect the general tenets of the psychology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They look for answers to the workings of the human psyche by delving into the subconscious, which was presumed to be shaped by either childhood experiences, repressed desires, or a collective unconscious. Finally, the

Sigmund Freud, born in the Austrian Empire as Sigismund Freud, was a renowned neurologist and also the founding father of psychoanalysis, who brought about a completely unique perspective on understanding human personality. He is reputed as the most dominant and controversial intellects since the turn of the century. He has produced multiple innovations that have been quite influential in the field of psychology. His book titled “The Interpretation of Dreams,” or “Die Traumdeutung,” in which Freud introduced the significance of the unconscious mind, later became the paramount in psychoanalysis. Afterwards, Freud published a more succinct explanation on chapter three of his previous book, The Dream as a Wish-Fulfillment, which he titled, “On Dreams.” This classic further explains where dreams came from, their mechanism and the relation of dreams to the mental processes.