Dream Interpretation Research Paper

1082 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Strengths and weaknesses of Sigmund Freud’s theory

Dream interpretation is a clinical process that has become increasingly popular to decipher the meanings of dreams. Many believe that your dreams reflect on your personality, and can have deep meaning in relations to one’s past. Dream interpretation has been deeply studied by one of psychology’s most famous theorists, Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that all thoughts and actions are propelled through one’s unconscious self to some extent. Dreams are one of the world’s greatest mysteries, and attempting to understand one’s dreams and relate them to personality can be extremely difficult to comprehend. They can be strange and terrifying which could lead to some people believing that they have something to do with past experiences. It is almost …show more content…

But is dream interpretation as accurate as therapists claim it is, or are dreams not quite as relatable to our personalities and past experiences as we think they are? Mazzoni, Lombardo, Malvagia, and Loftus (1999) conducted a very interesting study about dream interpretation’s actual effect in the practice of psychotherapy. This study consisted of many participants who attended therapy sessions to find out if their recent dreams were related to some sort of traumatic childhood experience that occurred before the age of 3 years. A dream intervention took place where many participants became sure that they had a traumatic experience at that age, except not positive that the experience ever occurred. The study was conducted to find out if dream interpretation is accurate and effective in general, or if it is based off of false beliefs. The goal was to discover the true effects of dream interpretation, and to see if it produced incorrect interpretation of the patient’s actual life history and experiences. The theorists strongly believed that dream interpretation leads patients to have false beliefs and memories. The experiment started with 128 undergraduate students from the University of Florence, which was known as the Florence False …show more content…

Freud strongly believed that dreams were related to the unconscious wishes and experience of the person. The chapter is dedicated to Freud’s studies and beliefs, particularly his belief that the dream itself produces a deeper emotional meaning that most people do not recognize. This could mean that repressed experiences that were forgotten, appear in one’s dreams without them being fully aware of the significance. This suggests that while dreaming, people can understand that the unconscious mind can portray past experiences and personality traits that one wouldn’t be able to see while awake. Freud’s psychoanalytic theories (which include dream interpretation) had a major effect in psychotherapy training in the mid 1900’s. He believed that the unconscious self can be just as powerful (or perhaps more powerful) than the conscious self. The idea of “repression” comes into play here because the participants in the research study began to believe that traumatic experiences were erased from their consciousness. Freud had a strong belief that repression can be overcome and conquered through therapy. We may never know if dream interpretation can accurately decipher repressed

Show More
Related

  • Jung, Gardner, and Freud Comparison

    1140 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...f the waking state; it is built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. Freud went beyond the boundaries of education. Freud explains his reasoning about dreams, “[Dreams] are not meaningless, they are not absurd; they do not imply that one portion of our store of ideas is asleep while another portion is beginning to wake” (330). He took a different approach about the way he analyzed people. His liberally educated mind allowed him to get past the typical mental analysis and utilize dream interpretations to fabricate theories.

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud's Theory Of Psychoanalysis

    741 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sigmund Freud believed that he “occupies a special place in the history of psychoanalysis and marks a turning point, it was with it that analysis took the step from being a psychotherapeutic procedure to being in depth-psychology” (Jones). Psychoanalysis is a theory or therapy to decode the puzzle of neurotic disorders like hysteria. During the therapy sessions, the patients would talk about their dreams. Freud would analyze not only the manifest content (what the dreamer remembers) of the dreams, but the disguise that caused the repressions of the idea. During our dreams, the decision making part of personality’s defenses are lowered allowing some of the repressed material to become more aware in a distorted form. He distinguished between

    Read More

  • Mental Illness In Hamlet Essay

    1037 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Freud's Theory of Dreaming and Repression

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    The relationship between dreaming and repression is complex and requires thorough understanding of Freud’s theory thus it is better to get to know some of the terms and concepts Freud raises in study of dreams. As all the information is gathered, it is believed that the wish as fulfilled is shown only in a state of repression during sleep.

    Read More

  • Dream Interpretation: Sigmund Freud

    1522 Words  | 4 Pages

    One of Freud's major contributions was his appreciation of unconscious processes in people’s lives. According to Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, the dream images and their symbolic messages can be observed as one's fulfilled wis...

    Read More

  • Unraveling the Intricacies of Dreams

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Spellbound, By Sigmund Freud

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    Meaning that when the latent content goes through the process of becoming manifest content, it hides from the ego what the meaning that the id is trying to make. Combined with condensation and displacement is then repressed, “…a casual connection between the obscurity of the dream-content and the state repression…” (Freud 164). Which leads to the full definition by Freud that, “Repression—relaxation of the censorship—the formation of a compromise…” (Freud 166), allowing the mind to subdue from the past experienced

    Read More

  • Personality Vs Personality

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sigmund Freud is one of the most popular and credited scientists in the history of psychology. When Freud sought how to treat his patients, he discovered that there were some patients who had nothing physically wrong with them. Freud began to explore the possibility that these patients may be suffering from a mental rather than physical disorder and his lead to his discovery of the unconscious. Freud determined the unconscious was basin of thoughts, feelings, memories, and wishes that were mostly unacceptable. Other psychologists believe unconsciousness is merely information we process that we are unaware of. Part of exploring the unconscious was to analyze the dreams patients were having. Patients were able to relay the deepest parts of their minds be using free association. Free association is when a person relaxes completely and reacts however they want without feeling shame or embarrassment. It was through free association and freedom of expression that Freud was able to determine a patient’s personality. Per...

    Read More

  • Theories About Dreams

    947 Words  | 2 Pages

    Freud’s theory however, is only one of many such as Francis Crick’s. He believed that dreams were a way of mental “house cleaning” or getting rid of unneeded memories. He thought them useful because you don’t have to remember every small minute detail of your life.

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams

    1185 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

    322 Words  | 1 Pages

    Freud is presenting a case study and explains his belief that there is a psychological technique that makes interpreting dreams possible. Freud's work with free association helped him to analyze his patient's dreams and come to the conclusion that many elements lie below the level of the conscious mind. Freud has done extensive research on individuals to find the meaning behind their dreams and the impact it has in regard to their psychological makeup.

    Read More

  • Freud's Theory of Psychosexual Development

    1771 Words  | 4 Pages

    Porter, Laurence M. The Interpretation of Dreams: Freud's Theories Revisited. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1987. Print.

    Read More

  • Freud's Contributions To The Field of Psychology

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    Freud graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Vienna, Austria. Soon after, he mapped the geography of the human psyche, and began working with severely disturbed patients. Through extremely intense self-analysis, Freud concurred that repressed desires were the source of emotional disturbances. He then developed psychoanalysis, a method of bringing these repressed desires to the conscious level. In order to evoke these hidden, unconscious desires, Freud used dream analysis and free association. He believed dreams were the royal road to the unconscious, and through the interpretation of its contents, repressed desires can be brought to surface. Free association was a therapeutic technique in which the patient would spontaneously verbalize thoughts in an atmosphere that was open and non-judgmental. It was Freud’s belief that the patient would begin to self-analyze, and ultimately ident...

    Read More

  • The Psychology of Religion

    1536 Words  | 4 Pages

    William Benton. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952. 767-806. Print Freud, Sigmund. “The Interpretation of Dreams.”

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Freud And Freud's Interpretation Of Dreams

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    He goes further with his interpretation. He compares dreams to psychopathological conditions since both refer to thoughts on a subconscious level, and thus decides to break down dreams through the process of psychotherapy. This process requires the dreamer to record the dream (on paper or to a therapist) “without self-criticism”, analyze the dream and draw a conclusion. To demonstrate this process, Freud records one of his dreams, which is given below:

    Read More

More about Dream Interpretation Research Paper

Open Document