Sigmund Freud: Dreams - Term Paper Example

? Sigmund Freud: Dreams Task Sigmund Freud has discussed many theories, including sexuality, religion, and gender identity, mostof which are considered speculative. He believed that there was great involvement on his patients’ dreams and their mental problems. Freud never anticipated his theories to be correct, but he repeatedly scrutinized the facts to be precise. Freud did not try to foresee his results but he acted on the principal of acceptance. The world accepted the hypothesis of how Freud interpreted dreams. He believed that there was a link between dreams and being awake. For instance, he says, Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep “After looking at a person’s life keenly, these included the secret life wished to succeed. He stated that our dreams are symbolic, and sexual wants influenced our unconscious part of the mind” (Sigmund, 2005, p 5). What are dreams? In early centuries, people could not exclusively define a dream. They thought it was a friendly or traumatizing encounter caused by supernatural or satanic spirits (Sigmund, 2005, p 9). This issue is currently addressed in psychology and few learned people believe that dreams are individual mental acts. There are many questions on how dreams originate, how they relate to our mental life, the disturbance it causes independently, and how individuals keep these thoughts aside after waking up. Dreams are all forms of wish fulfillment — attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past (Freud, 2005, p10). The major question on the meaning of the dream is its psychic importance on the mental process in connection to a biological function, and meaning made from every dream as other mental productions. Many philosophers believe that dreams are mental activities that make individuals feel elevated to an upper position after their discovery. Many agree that dreams have an origin in spiritual settings and that they are external showings that spirits that have been distracted during movement in daytime. Medical writers do not agree with this belief; to their understanding, dreams are caused by external stimuli or interferences of internal organs when a person is asleep. Popularly, dreams are considered to prefigure the truth, mainly by replacing events in the dream with other symbols (Freud, 2005, p 10). “Dream images represent the unconscious wishes or thought disguised through symbolization and other distorting mechanisms” (Freud, 2011, p 56). Freud believed the popular suggestion of dream as superstition, rather than the medical suggestion. He used psychopath in the explanation of dreams. He did this by observing patients who had problems in concentration. When the patient had a problem in concentrating on an issue, he assured him/her that it was normal. Freud told the patients that problems in concentration were unimportant at times and this helped to lessen self-criticism. This helped to replace the criticism with another fresh idea, thus adaptation to mental continuity. (Freud, 2005, p 11) Freud believed relation of ideas from a dream results in many thoughts (Freud, 2005, p12). He believed issues produced by breaking down the dream resulted into more discoveries. He acknowledged that one experiences emotions and intense when thoughts are unfolded at the back of the mind because there is a connection of thoughts which fit and repeat themselves. He later concluded that dream is a replacement of thoughts that are emotional and from mind. Freud asserted that he could not understand how dreams could arise from thoughts but recommended they be treated as mentally important. He proposed that candidly following up of thoughts in a dream led to the reappearance of parts of the dream sensibly. (Freud, 2005, p 12) Freud divided dreams in three groups based on latent and manifest. There are those that make sense and are intelligible, they allow us go through our psychic life, and are habitually short and not recognized. The second category is those that have distinct meaning but are unfamiliar because we cannot put meaning with our mental life. The third category is those that do not have any meaning or intelligence, they comprise most of the dreams thus there is an attitude between them and medical theories on small psychic activity. (Freud, 2005, p 17) According to Freud, the difference between the buried and manifest dream is their value. This is manly observed in the second and third category of the dreams, where solutions are given when the hidden is replaced by the obvious dream. In his investigations, he found that obvious and hidden were the same in the first category of dreams, this in turn replaced the function of the dream. It was on his understanding that children dreams were in this category and they made sense. Freud suggested that all dreams had a common thing; they wanted to meet a certain wish that was unknown at daytime. He acknowledged those children dreams were had to understand but they wanted to meet a certain desire. For example when a child dreams fighting in the arena, he is likely to have read war books during the day. Freud found that children dreams connect with the day activities and not anything to stop that is acceptable. He suggested that this may happen to adults, an individual may have a strong desire to satisfy his thirst but he ignores it and goes back to sleep. His understanding was that the infantile dreams were desires not realized. Dream Mechanism Freud suggested that people who assume elements of a dream have been transformed and this desires have taken place. He understood that dreams worked by putting elements together, and that it was hard to come up with an opinion at first. Through deeper digging to the dream, one was able to come up with ideas of the dream. No factor is realized when connection of ideas lead to different situations. The dream feelings that have been collected must have an authentic association in order to make a situation. Sigmund asserts (Freud, 2005, p 22). Dream work is the process by which the mind condenses, distorts, and translates dream thoughts into dream content. These dream thoughts are processed like photos from a camera; basics are processed in downward order and those that differ erase each other. This process tells on the shaking statements of unclear elements in the dream. Freud explained that dreams that do not have common thoughts have a problem in creating something. The simplest way to make meaning from two uncommon thoughts is to change expression of one thought in order to meet the other. He suggested that putting together parts of constituent peculiar elements that are not found in the dream or waking state are suggestion of mixed persons with animalistic expression. There is a psychological technique that allows us to interpret dreams, and that when this procedure is applied, every dream turns out to be a meaningful, psychical formation that can be given an identifiable place in what goes on within our waking life. Freud explained that it was possible to create a person from another individual’s characteristic and put him in a situation that happened to another person. Putting together a dream was not from a single element but from a series of elements in order to make sense, it is not necessary they be from the same situation but from a diverse area. He advocated that one dream element lead to several dream thoughts and that it is not a must they point from dream element to dream thought but they can interchange. (Freud, 2005, p 23) After change from dream thought to another, putting together the thoughts is the next dream work. Putting together does not represent the difference in dream thought and dream content. Freud did comprehend from his analysis that appearance of a dream is different from the latent content. He found out there was a small difference in a dream though a content which disappeared latter after close investigation; however after keen observation he found the thoughts repeating in the contents hence there was no difference found. He discovered that the thoughts provided a small role in the dream work and they might not be present or they are represented by another illusion in the dream. Dreams worked through displacement where mental importance is transposed to sensory clarity (Freud, 2011). He highly considered that putting together dreams worked with dream displacement and that when two ideas have the same component are replaced in content by various images. Thus, putting dream content and displacement reduced mixed images and made sense. Disguise of Dream to Desire Dream disguises desire through displacement, which is a major problem in dream workings. It is usually through psychology and has a major motive behind it. Freud recognized we return to ourselves by throwing the encounters that cannot be ignored in breaking down the dream. He suggested when the idea of repression was put together with dream distortion in relation to mental matters we are able to understand what to expect. The breakdown of not understanding dreams leads to familiar situations where the scene is again recognized and pictures of desire realized. The desire might be repressed or connected to repressed idea. “The dream images represent the unconscious wishes or thought disguised through symbolization and other distorting mechanisms” (Sigmund, 2010, p150). Freud agreed with those who believe dreams foretell the future, but he argued that it does not tell what will occur but what we anticipate to occur. He suggested that dreams could be divided into three categories in relation to the realization of desire. The non-repressing and are mostly encountered by adults, second group are accompanied by repressed desires and compose most of our daily dreams hence requiring break down to understand them. Thirdly, there are those with repression but have little or no concealment and are followed with feelings that end them. Dreams and Sexuality Freud, through careful consideration, deduced that dreams can be bisexual may bring up feelings of homosexuality. They perceived to be accepted sexual actions of a normal person in dreams. He disagreed of dreams interpreted bisexually because it brought an essence of generalization. He acknowledged that dreams with different meanings and have small importance can be analyzed and be traced to have sexual wish feelings. “Thumb sucking and other displays of autoeroticism, retention of feces, sibling rivalry, masturbation…” (Jones, 2001, p 72). Most of his patients who had dreams having sex with their mother had difficult in confessing and the answer he got was that they could not remember. Freud suggested that these dreams revealed that that a person was familiar with a certain locality that in essence is the mother’s genital. This is the only place one has been before. Other dreams manifest a person being in a fearing situation or in deep waters. They usually represent embryonic life when a person is in his mothers’ womb or when a person is being born. Why Dreams Are Forgotten After Waking Up Dreams seem to be forgotten because when we wake up in the morning we believe we can remember very little that happened at night. These dreams that were fresh in the morning tend to fade away during the day hence very little can be remembered. Many people know they were dreaming but do not know what they were dreaming about, this make them believe that dreams are there to be forgotten. Forgetting of dreams is a complex process; it results from a variety of factors that makes us forget things in the morning this is because we do not hold many things emotionally in the morning. (Storr, 2011). Dreams are forgotten because they are replaced with remembrance of greater things happening around. When a person has woken up he easily forgets things that have happened only once and remember those that happened recently Weaknesses of Sigmund Freud I will review Sigmund Freud’s hypothesis by disagreeing with him because he has made substantial mistakes. To start with, the operating models he used had no energy. They got energy from the environment and body which is not enough. He put more concern on quality of thoughts instead of quantity. If he used measurement as a basis of quantity, it would have made sense but this was not the case. Instead, he dealt on the pleasure and ignoring quantitative measurement on displacement and compression. He ignored some biological principles and gave different opinions, for instance, he believed that love intrigued by pleasure. Freud concept on tension reduction did not make sense because he recommended that curiosity arose from stimuli. He proposed that behaviors were transmitted through genes and that the cultural settings never contributed, which is not true. (Freud, 2005 pg57) Freud did not consider the theories of psychology, which he ignored, and they are being studied presently, hence making his works to be contradictory. There was a problem in pointing how thing were related, how the infant behavior related with conflicts. He was not able to give clear distinction of the mind and physical problem; whether they resulted from psychophysical situation or from other interactions. Freud results are from research he did long ago hence they can be inaccurate and exact prediction cannot be made. Additions Freud looked at dreams on the unconscious part; he never analyzed the conscious part, and this made his works to be half done. He ought to have added conscious part to make his work complete. This would avoid the contradictions his works is receiving from current psychologist. Gestalt psychologist is looking at the conscious thoughts and perception. Freud added that things are perceived as simple different rather than whole components. It is important if he dealt with quality of thoughts instead of dealing with their numbers. This would make it more reasonable. Freud needs to have emphasized on cultural settings as a major contributor of behavior instead of dealing with the genetic influence on behavior. It is important if he pointed out how things were related instead of looking at things separately. (Storr, 2001). Wonders I still wonder why Freud as a psychologist believed that the fact was superstitious and it would foresee the future. It can be more rational if he concentrated on facts because he was a scientist. I do not understand how he was able to interpret dreams and concluded, especially when he interpreted how boys had the desire to have sex with their mothers when they were even ashamed to confess. This is because he was able to join patterns from different sceneries and make sense. It confuses me how he was able to come up with a mechanism of interpreting and classifying dreams; he understood the dreams likely to be experienced by children and those to be experienced by adults. Conclusion In his discussion, Freud has listed many factors about dreams. He has given descriptions about dreams and the mechanism in which they occur. He has explained different categories of dreams, those that are experienced by adults and those that are experienced by children. Single elements are joined to make sense in the dream. Freud has explained factors that have been disturbing individuals in their dream. Freud ought to have incorporated methodologies that are used by psychologist currently; this would have cleared doubts in his work. References Freud,S. (2005) Dream Psychology Psychoanalysis for Beginners. Retrieved on October 9, 2011 from: Eder, M. (1920). Dream Psychology. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dream Psychology. Retrieved on September 30, 2011 from: Read More