Freud’s Theory of Dreaming

By Momina

Who was Freud?

• Freud was a doctor living in Vienna, Austria.• He thought that dreaming was a very

important part of a persons life.• He said that as a person dreams their

unconscious wishes and desires can be understood.

What was his theory?

• Freud thought that a large part of our brain is not accessible. This is the unconscious mind.

• He said that the conscious mind is what we are aware of and what we can remember, discuss and deal with.

So what did he want to do?

• Freud’s theory all started with him being trained as a doctor and how he saw that very little was being done for the mentally ill.

• He didn’t like the way patients were being cured at the time.

• So Freud stated looking for different ways of curing the mentally ill. So he went to France and learned hypnotism.

What he thought..

• There are two features to dreaming. 1. Manifest content –this is the story that the

dreamer tells about his dream2. Latent Content – this Is the underlying or

hidden meaning of the dreamThe latent content is what is hiding behind the

manifest content.

What is Dreamwork?

• Dreamwork is constantly trying to keep unconscious thoughts hidden and repressed while dreaming.

• There are 3 parts of Dreamwork.1. Condensation2. Displacement3. Secondary Elaboration

What is condensation?

• When many ideas appear as one idea in a dream.

• An example of this could be that someone has a dream about a snake.

• A snake in a dream could be a symbol of :- Trouble- Death or after life- About change

What is Displacement?

• This is when some thing unimportant seems to be important in the dream and the actual important thing isn't even noticed…

• An example of this could be that the dream starts of with an apple then in-between there is a mention of a flower and then the dream returns to an apple.

Secondary Elaboration

• This is how the dreamer builds up a story to make it seem as it makes sense.

• When doing this the dreamer adds or changes some bits

• This makes the analysis of the dream hard.• So the latent content of the dream is harder to

understand.

A Craaazzzyyy Dream

I had a dream that I lived in my house with my kids and my father also lived there. for some reason I wanted to escape with my kids but my father wouldn't let us leave the house. my mother, aunt and grandmother and a close friend of mine would come to the windows and we would throw belongings to them to take away and then when my father was no around me and the kids tried it leave. my father and I fought and he stabbed me in the neck and then I stabbed him in the heart. I sat down and apologized to my kids for killing their grandfather. then there was a break in my dream and the next part I went out to a club with friends and I still had a bandage on my stab wound.

Psychoanalysis. This was what Freud based his theory on…

What is Free Association?

• This is when the patient is asked to say their thoughts out loud, without controlling them

• This then helps the analyst look for any links between thoughts and ideas.

There are 3 methods use in psychoanalysis.

1. Slip of the tongue2. Free association3. Dream Analysis

Since there is more than one way the analyst has more information to work with and these can be the evidence of his conclusions about the unconscious mind of the patient.

What is Slip of the Tongue?

• This is when is also called the Freudian Slips• These are moments when someone uses one

word when meaning another.• This can be used to figure out what the person

is thinking unconsciously.• Although when people sometimes say

something when they meant to say something else it could just be an accident. Not necessarily a Freudian Slip.

Dream Analysis

• This is when free association and the usual description of the dream is used.

• So like each item in the dream that the dreamer tells, can then be looked at separately.

• Like if the dreamer dreams about a snake, they can then be asked all their conscious thoughts on a snake. So then the analyst can look for links that might reveal unconscious thoughts.

Strengths

• It used a unique method to find data that was difficult to access

• It gathered in depth and detailed information about individuals. This kind of data is qualitative data about real life.

Weaknesses

• All his samples were biased • His concepts were immeasurable• He interpreted his findings, so they might be

biased• There is an alternate to it. Activation-synthesis

theory

Conclusion

• So in conclusion we can say that Freuds theory was a good theory for its time because it was a unique one. But this theory also has its bad points. The bad points outweigh the good ones.