Are dreams a source of reliable divination? Generations upon generations seem to have thought so. They incubated dreams by travelling afar, by fasting and by engaging in all other manners of self deprivation or intoxication. With the exception of this highly dubious role, dreams do seem to have three important functions:
a. To process repressed emotions (wishes, in Freud's speech) and other mental content which was suppressed and stored in the unconscious.
b. To order, classify and, generally, to pigeonhole conscious experiences of the day or days preceding the dreaming ("day residues"). A partial overlap with the former function is inevitable: some sensory input is immediately relegated to the darker and dimmer kingdoms of the
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Defences are gradually dismantled and a new, more functional, view of the world is established. This is a painful and frightening process. This function of the dream is more in line with Jung's view of dreams as "compensatory". The previous three functions are "complementary" and, therefore, Freudian.
It would seem that we are all constantly engaged in maintenance, in preserving that which exists and inventing new strategies for coping. We are all in constant psychotherapy, administered by ourselves, day and night. Dreaming is just the awareness of this on-going process and its symbolic content. We are more susceptible, vulnerable, and open to dialogue while we sleep. The dissonance between how we regard ourselves, and what we really are and between our model of the world and reality – this dissonance is so enormous that it calls for a (continuous) routine of evaluation, mending and re-invention. Otherwise, the whole edifice might crumble. The delicate balance between we, the dreamers, and the world might be shattered, leaving us defenceless and dysfunctional.
To be effective, dreams must come equipped with the key to their interpretation. We all seem to possess an intuitive copy of just such a key, uniquely tailored to our needs, to our data and to our circumstances. This Areiocritica helps us to decipher the true and motivating meaning of the dialogue. This is one reason why dreaming is discontinuous: time must be given to interpret and to
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).
Dreams are something all humans share in common and they manifest the realization of our lives. They have a great influence over our essence and can provide colossal amounts of courage and strength to accomplish our greatest desires. However, when we do not have dreams to fight for our lives become meaningless and sorrowful, nevertheless this is the situation many people face throughout their lives. Broken dreams have become a popular theme among writers because a connection can be made with the theme and because there one’s truth can be faced. Whether dreams are forgotten or unaccomplished, there is a theory by philosopher Carl Jung that states, “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on
We all go through the “dream stage”, but is it so that they are even meant to come across our minds during our slumber? Dreams are simply desires that certain people have a big hope to one day to actually experience their destinies and thoughts. Although reveries are recurrent, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston vividly contrasts the type of dreams people have and how they accomplish them. The determination in the 1920s set off success in the African American culture leading people to look past the limit and keep going. In “Freedom’s Plow” , Hughes believes dreams are set and fulfilled through unity, but on the other side of the grass Zora Neale Hurston in her piece, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, she perceives that dreams are asymmetrical and are not
Carl Gustav Jung (a.k.a. C.G. Jung) was born in 1875, in Switzerland, and worked closely with Freud for many years, he learned many things from him in this time. Eventually Jung split from him because his ideas and concepts of psychoanalysis began to differ from those of Freud. Jung was a convectionist, unlike Freud who was a reductionist. Jung saw dreams as a way to come up with solutions to problems you are facing in your waking life. Jung took Freud’s one technique of “free association” and expanded on it. Unlike Freud, he saw this concept as being extremely important. He thought that the dreamer’s thoughts and opinions on what the dream could mean are even more important than anyone else’s, including many times an expert. Dreams, to Freud, are a way of interacting with your unconscious. Carl Jung’s methods to interpreting dreams could be a very important step to help people lead happier and healthier lives. He believed that the manifest content in our dreams is just as important as the latent content when it comes to interpreting our dreams. Freud took a very hands on approach when interpreting people’s dreams, but Jung put forth less information from himself because he thought dream interpretation relied heavily on the dreamer himself. A college student who is experiencing nightmares consistently may visit a psychologist who knows about the meanings of dreams. A psychiatrist who believes more in Freud’s ways may take the dream as being
Kinship ties also give the responsibility of passing knowledge of the Dreaming from Elders to other generations. The Dreaming is communicated at different degrees depending on a person’s age and their position within the community. Learning about and sharing the Dreaming is a life long journey.
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.
Specific Purpose: The purpose of this speech is to inform the audience about the deeper significance of dreams, with the goal of allowing them to find meaning in their own dreams.
Dreams have a lengthy record of being a subject for debate and a source of motivation. In ancient Egypt, pharaohs had several interpreters to decipher their dreams as they believed they were messages from the gods (Lincoln, 1935, p.68). The ancient Hebrews believed that their dreams were tied to divine revelations as well. Native American tribes believed that dreams were a connection to their ancestors and used obtaining a vision from a dream as a rite of passage (Tedlock, 1981, p.324). In the present day, every night all across the world, people still experience sequences of imagery encompassed by sensations and emotions while asleep. The average person tends to dream up to seven times a night
In Module 9 on the topic of Sleep and Dreams, was an interesting topic that was discussed in class as many people normally question why and how we dream. There isn’t a specific reason in how dreams are functioned but there are different interpretations and stereotypes that people think have meanings and others that don’t.
Dream content reflects aspects of waking-life experiences. After memories are made, they are often fragmentally merged with other information to construct larger, holistic dreams. Autobiographical memories are predominantly represented in dreams in comparison to episodic and semantic memories. Among various characteristics from waking-life experiences such as places, people, and events, emotions are highly incorporated into dream content. There is also a decreasing relationship between the cognitive demand of an activity and the frequency in which that activity occurs in dreams. Dreams tend to include material from experiential memories and events from the preceding day as well as experiences from 5-7 days prior. The recurrence of memory content in dreams seems to support the hypothesis that dreaming helps with memory consolidation, or particularly the content which is reflected in dreams.
Thesis Statement: Dreams are successions of images, emotions, and sensations that occur subconsciously during sleep.
Freud found two meanings in a dream: the manifest meaning and the latent meaning (Freud 168). The manifest meaning of a dream is what is remembered upon waking (Felluga). The manifest meaning can reflect a situation that follows common sense and unfold in a way possible in waking life. Other times it can take its own wild path that follows little or no logical sequence when viewed at surface level. Despite this vast difference, both of these are influenced by the superego, a part of the mind that Freud believes houses the knowledge of the structure of society and what is acceptable in the dreamers culture. The dream takes place on a stage or backdrop that makes sense and relates to waking life (Freud 216-17). While the manifest meaning is useful and can itself contain a message, interpretation of it can reveal more than seen at face value.
It is universally known that dreams are full of meanings and emotions. In Freud’s theory, all dreams are wish fulfillments or at least attempts at wish fulfillment. The dreams are usually presented in an unrecognizable form because the wishes are repressed. Freud proposes there are two levels in the structure of dreams, the manifest contents and the latent dream-thoughts. The manifest dream, a dream
Thesis: Understanding how dreams occur, how they affect our lives and what they mean to help us grasp what dreams actually are.
on dreams go as far back as 2000 BC in Egypt. One of the first organized glimpses