“Dream interpretation is a process of assigning meaning to dreams.” In ancient Egypt and Greece, dreaming was considered a supernatural communication or a means of divine intervention whose messages that could be reveled by people with certain powers. Sigmund Freud came up with two techniques to get information on his patients “unconscious minds.” One of Freud’s techniques that he came up with was interpreting dreams.
Dream interpretations have formed a large part of Freud’s method of understanding mental life; he also believed that subdued materials often surfaced in dreams in a symbolic form. Dreams can be confusing, frightening, or wonderful, which reveals our innermost secrets.
Thesis Statement: Dreams can reflect human emotions, and other experiences, like our deepest desires, hopes, fears, and fantasies. Interpertating our dreams may help us understand ourselves better and help us solve our problems.
Dream interpretations were first documented on clay tablets that dated back to 3000 to 4000 B.C. People in primal societies were unable to distinguish between the dream world and reality. The people in these societies didn’t see the dream world as an extension of reality; instead they saw it as powerful world. “This path of dream interpretation also leads back to the ancient Egyptians with the first written record of dream interpretation around 1350 B.C.”
Egyptians believed that dreams are warnings, advice and prophecies from gods. They also believe that gods reveal themselves in dreams, but their soul is not transported to another place and time. Egyptians distinguished the interpretations of dreams as playing, in their words. Egyptians and researchers believe that the ritual “Incubation” was derived from an ear...
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...Hidden Meaning of Dreams.” By: Craig Hamilton-Parker (1999))
Sigmund Freud believed that the human mind consists of three aspects; he called them the ego, the super-ego, and the id. The id is the “unconscious side”; Freud believes that this is consisted of instinctive drives. He also called the id the “pleasure principle”. The super-ego is also known as “the moral principle,” which corresponds roughly to the “conscience,” which Freud believed has a social origin. The ego, in sleep, is relaxed and can no longer adjudicate between conflicting forces of the id and super-ego. Freud says, “In sleep the super-ego stands guard over the ego, protecting it from the overwhelming instinctive urges of the id.” Freud also believed that “dreams were a symbolic language by which the id tried to communicate with the ego, but its messages were censored by the super-ego.”
The interpretation of dreams by Sigmund Freud holds a ton of information, mostly about what our dreams mean and how they can influence our daily lives. He expresses on page 310, that dreams can be wishes, fears,
A common definition of dreams according to “Patterns for College Writing” is “the symbolic representation of mental states”, but this sparse definition does not begin to encompass the complex mechanisms behind dreams and its effects on human culture around the globe. Dreams have long been the topics of folklore and urban legends. Since human beginnings, people have sought to uncover the origin of dreams. The ancient Greeks believed dreams came from the God Oneiroi. The Chinese believes that dreams happened when the hun or spirit leaves the body for the land of the dead. The Ishi Indians believed that dreams were sacred messages from the Gods. Yet even now, with the current technological and intellectual advancements, scientists and psychoanalysts have still to find the true reasons and meanings of these dreams. Some argue that dreams are the products of overactive subconscious minds while others argue that dreams are solely randomized emotions from the limbic system during sleep. Despite these contrasting theories, the truth of the matter is that the topic of dreams and the reasons behind them remain a mystery.
In 1900 , an Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud produced a work entitled The Interpretation of Dreams, reviewing the idea that dreams allow psychic examination, that the dreams that are happening contain some sort of psychological meaning which can be brought on by interpretation. Freud says that every dream will release itself as a emotional structure, full of importance, and one which may be assigned to a designated place in the psychic activities. According to Freud's original thoughts dreams have two contents, a manifest content which is the dream that one actually experiences and a hidden content which is the meaning of the dream as discovered by interpretation.
The average person spends over one-third of their life sleeping, and over this period of time he or she can have over 1,825 dreams (Wicklinski). By definition, dreams are mental images, thoughts, or emotions that are experienced while sleeping. In the beginning, dreams were thought to be messages sent from the gods or spirit world. Researchers now have many theories explaining why people dream. Many of these theories explain that dreams can resemble an individual’s sensory experiences or even secret wishes. All people dream, but only 42% of people can recall their dreams from the night before (“Dreams”). The study of dreams is a topic that is constantly being debated by researchers for many reasons. Dreaming is important because it can impact people’s health, provide insight into what they are feeling, and reveal information about their behavior.
There are many facts that are unknown about dreams and their meanings. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to understand the meaning of dreams. They have all been fascinated by the fact that the content of dreams may have meanings relating to one's life. Are dreams just thoughts in people's minds, or are dreams in fact representations of different areas in people's lives? Dreams represent many different areas of one's life in physical, emotional, and mental ways. Dreams can relay to people facts about their lives that they are not even aware of. There are also many ways that dreams can help cure different physical, emotional, and mental problems in one's life. This paper will discuss dreams and their meanings, and ways of interpreting a dream using such methods as hypnotherapy and psychoanalysis therapy that can help a person in physical, mental, and emotional ways. The first fact that will be discussed is what dreams are and how they work for people in allowing the person to discover more about himself. Dreams can be defined as "a conscious series of images that occur during sleep" (Collier's, vol. 8). Dreams are usually very vivid in color and imagery. They reveal to the dreamer different wishes, concerns, and worries that he or she has. Dreams usually reflect every part of who the dreamer is. The content of the person's dream is usually made up according to how old the dreamer is and how educated the he or she is (Collier's, vol. 8). Dreams are not planned out or thought up. The unconscious part of the mind brings out bits and pieces of information in the dreamer's mind and places them together. According to Encarta, dreams are almost always visual. Forty to fifty percent of dreams have some form of communication present in them and a very small percentage of dreams give the dreamer the ability to use his or her five senses (Encarta). Dreams allow one to take a closer look into his mind and himself in a quest for self-discovery. Dreams can be used to solve all different types of problems. In Sigmund Freud's book, The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud states: "As regards the dream, all the troubles of waking life are transferred by it to the sleeping state […]" (Freud 113). They relay things about a person that the person may not be able to see.
...n and development throughout history. After the research, I learned that while most dreams are fairly coherent, patterned, which include everyday settings, people, activities, and events, they may involve relatively unusual and perhaps bizarre aspects. Altogether, these images would allow people to have the most revealing and distinctive view of who they are and what they know in daily life by telling stories in the brain. However, while I still feel that no theory can exactly interpret what dreams’ meanings really are, it is interesting to know more how human brain’s activity (dreaming) function when people sleep. Moreover, I have decided to see my dreams as a television show with different episodes at night. That way, I will be able to enjoy the dream without ruining the fun that my brain offers because I would love to see what and how my brain wants me to see.
Psychology, neuroscience try to explain them, 2012). He studied dreams to better understand aspects of personality as they relate to pathology. Freud believed that every action is motivated by the unconscious at a certain level. In order to be successful in a civilized society, the urges and desires of the unconscious mind must be repressed. Freud believed that dreams are manifestations of urges and desires that are suppressed in the unconscious. Freud categorized the mind into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. When one is awake, the impulses if the id are suppressed by the superego, but during dreams, one may get a glimpse into the unconscious mind, or the id. The unconscious has the opportunity to express hidden desires of the id during dreaming. Freud believed that the id can be so disturbing at times that the id’s content can be translated into a more acceptable form. This censor leads to a sometimes confusing and strange dream image. According to Freud, the reason one may struggle to remember a dream is because the superego protects the conscious mind from the disturbance of the unconscious mind (Dream Theories,
All over the world different people, scientists, and civilizations have different dream theories. For instance, the Senoi tribe in Malaysia has a fascinating tradition of dream telling. Every morning the people of the tribe begin their day by discussing and interpreting their dreams with each other. The children, as they grow older, actually learn to control their dreams by simply wishing bad dreams into positive ones. It is observed that, by paying tribute their dreams, the people of the Senoi tribe learn to have faith in themselves. Also, they have very few, if any, mental problems “could working constructively with dreams be part of the answer” to mental issues? (Peirce)
During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, a psychologist named Sigmund Freud welcomed the new age with his socially unacceptable yet undoubtedly intriguing ideologies; one of many was his Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the gateway into a person’s unconscious mind and repressed desires. He was also determined to prove his theory and the structure, mechanism, and symbolism behind it through a study of his patients’ as well as his own dreams. He contended that all dreams had meaning and were the representation of a person’s repressed wish. While the weaknesses of his theory allowed many people to deem it as merely wishful thinking, he was a brilliant man, and his theory on dreams also had many strengths. Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind enabled him to go down in history as the prominent creator of Psychoanalysis.
Freud also discusses the beliefs of early man, as dreams were connected to demons, gods and mythical deities. Dreams were perceived to be of a supernatural nature in primitive times and dreams were believed to portend the future.
The first cultures to classify different types of dreams were the Babylonians and Assyrians. As stated by Amy Coy, creator of worldofdreamssymbols.com, to them, there were two types of dreams: good and bad. Good dreams were dreams that were sent from the gods, and that bad dreams were from evil and demons. They also believed that dreams have predictive power of sending omens or prophecies to people about the future.
For thousands of years humans have experienced a phenomenon which we describe today as dreaming. It has puzzled and sparked interest to all whom experience it. For as long as people have been dreaming, there have been people trying to understand and interpret them. This research paper examines the causation and deeper meaning of dreams. It will compare and contrast the differentiating ideas on the subject by famous psychologists and also examine first-hand accounts from real individuals. The objective of paper is to shed some light on this complex and bizarre behavior.
The Ancient Greeks had surprise dream encounters with their gods. Native Americans turned to their dreams for guidance in life. Shamans dreamed in order to gather information from the spirits. Sleep and dreams define eras, cultures, and individuals. Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of dreams revolutionized twentieth-century thought.
Early studies from a physician named Sigmund Freud played a role in psychologists studying dream analysis (Bernstein 149). According to Freud, dreams are wishes that may be unacceptable to the conscious mind and society. He assumed that dreams represented unsatisfied wishes and that they happened during a state of the unconscious (Bernstein 149). According to researcher Judd Marmor, Freud did not obtain the information without help from others. Ancient people studied dreams around 2000 B.C. in Egypt, way before Freud was even born. The “Dreaming and Modern Dream Theory” article goes into great details about the history of dreams. During the Biblical time period, dreams were viewed as communications from God. People regarded dreams seriously and they thought that they had specific meanings (“Dreaming and Modern Dream Theory”). This information proves that dreams were analyzed based on people’s perceptions, and not on pure facts. Each Individual’s perceptions were based solely off of their
In dream analysis, therapists aim to reveal the latent content of dreams. They seek to explore the hidden symbolic meaning by taking the manifest contest or parts of the dream that are remembered and convert it into symbolic meaning. This was based on the idea that people feel unconsciously and dreams and one of the ways to express the forbidden thoughts and desires. The manifest content that may appear can be in a form of dream symbols that may have a meaning. For instance, a person who is running towards the sun in the dream may mean that that person is moving towards a brighter future.