Sigmund Freud 's View On Understanding Human Personality

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

Sigmund Freud is considered the father of the dream theory. His book, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), was very influential in the twentieth century and continues to captivate people today. Over many years of psychoanalysis, Freud found a correlation between socially unacceptable desires and the content of dreams (Freud, 1900). This lead him to the conclusion that dreams are the manifestation of wishes that are suppressed by the person because they are not socially acceptable (Freud, 1900). He separated content into two categories, manifest and latent (Freud, 1900). Manifest content of a dream is the actual literal subject-matter presented in the dream while latent content in the underlying symbols a dream is trying to present to the dreamer

Many will argue that Freud’s ideas have exerted a profound influence on twentieth –century thought and culture, though his work has come under scrutiny, it has shape the fundamentals of society view on civilization and discontents, dreams, psychoanalysis and the unconscious. For this paper, I will be discussing Freud’s fundamentals of dreams, what dreams represents, how dreams are constructed and its significance while paying close attention to the following areas of dreams, manifest and latent content, condensation and displacement, and censorship and repression.

I wrote this paper to get a better understanding of Sigmund Freud’s method and theory of dream analysis. The purpose of the paper will be to show the principals of Freud’s dream related theory that focuses on the physiology, interpretation, and psychology of dreams and to explain concepts such as latent and manifest content of dreams, the part of unconscious process, and the nature of dreams role in the determination of dream content. I would like to explore Sigmund Freud’s explanations of psycho-analytic and psychological theory and method to reveal whether Freud’s continuous revising to sexually based conclusions are able to support his own arguments. One of his themes was the amount of activity that goes on in our brains without us even

Both Freud and Jung provided important and interesting theories on dreams; encompassing their functions, their roots, and their meanings. Freud looked at dreams as a result of repressed memories, particularly repressed sexual memories from our childhood. Jung however, believed that dreams delved beyond sexual repression during younger years, to other problems, be it trauma, anxiety etc. Jung also believed dreams changed predominately through middle adult years, while Freud believed the opposite. There is little empirical evidence to reinforce either Freud or Jung’s theories, however, their contributions to the study of dreams in psychology cannot be lessened or denied.

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.

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

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

A number of psychologists questioned students from three different countries on their perspective on the importance of dreams in their lives. John Tierney stated that, “Relatively few students believed in modern theories that dreaming is simply the brain’s response to random impulses, or that it’s a mechanism for sorting and discarding information. Instead, the majority in all three countries believed, along with Freud, that dreams reveal important unconscious emotions” (Tierney, 2009). Those who agree with Freud believe that dreams are caused by their unaware emotions stored in the unconscious. Sigmund Freud “believed that repressed material often surfaced in dreams, although in symbolic form” (White, 2012, p.578). As a result of his

For this paper, I will provide a style of Freudian interpretations of Kafka’s “A Dream” tale. Which the famous philosopher, Freud, would interpret symbols for different reasonings behind a dream. In the book, Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, he provides an in depth explanation on his beliefs behind the meaning of each occurring dream that we experience. Freud has tons of concepts that he claims for the reasonings behind each dream that have. Whether if we experience a nightmare or just a normal dream. The concepts in Interpretation of Dreams that are primarily focused on in Franz Kafka’s written short story, “A Dream”, are the. According to Freud, he explains that nothing that occurs to us does not just come by chance, so he claims that everything that we do and think of is motivated by our unconscious at some level. He explains the drive of our dreams are to fulfill a wish. The ideas the he explains are dreams occur due to wish fulfillments. He also believes that dreams disguise the wishes of the unconscious, along with dreams are always important and significant, and addition to that dreams express infantile wishes. With the concepts and theories that were presented by Sigmund Freud they will be used to help provide a psychoanalytical interpretation of Franz Kafka’s short story focusing primarily on the symbols that the are hidden in the dream provided by the short story along with an analysis of the dream narrative as a whole.

   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, a famous psychologist, dream theory was one of the first and most in-depth. Freud expressed dreams to be “the royal road to the unconscious”. In July of 1895, Freud has a dream that inspired his theory. He had a patient, Irma, who wasn’t doing well in treatment. Freud blamed himself for Irma’s failure and he felt guilty. In Freud’s dream, he met Irma and examined her, in the dream he saw a chemical formula for a drug that another doctor had given her. It then dawned on him that it was not his fault that Irma was not improving. Freud’s understood that this dream was a wish-fulfillment. He wished that Irma’s incapability was not his fault and his dream made this wish come true, because it was another doctor’s fault. From that day on Freud continued on the belief that dreams were the fulfillment of wishes.

The Interpretation of Dreams was published by Sigmund Freud in the year 1900 as a thought provoking compilation of ideas surrounding the cognitive processes of dreaming. Although this book has been translated and edited since its original publishing date, it reads as if to hold true to Freudian fashion; addressing levels of consciousness and their effects on how specific dreams are formed. Freud makes a clear and reverent effort to acknowledge other’s theories to explain the unexplainable. His focus throughout the text is to hypothesize on how regression, resistance, and censorship all play a delicate role in the remembrance and interpretation of ones dreams.

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.

Eventually, Freud’s student Jung developed a second theory of dream analysis. It was Jung’s position that dreams cannot deceive. They are an unfiltered, pure display of the unconscious. While he agreed that dreams used fairy tales, myths, symbolism, and culture to convey thought, he was firm in the belief that only the dreamer could determine the true meaning of the dream based on the context of those symbols in their own life. Again, this method of dream interpretation is very subjective. While one’s conscious self may associate a dream with a particular meaning, the unconscious may not have been doing so.