Dream Interpreation

Dream Interpreation

  • Submitted By: nani
  • Date Submitted: 02/22/2009 8:11 PM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 1455
  • Page: 6
  • Views: 1016

Freud referred to dreams as “The Royal Unconsciousness” Sigmund Freud was the first to talk about psychoanalysis, a technique that allows an individual to recount dreams but what psychologists call free association. Free association is the individual saying whatever comes to mind when something is said. Psychoanalysts encourage the unconscious mind to recall scenes, thoughts, and to reconstruct past experiences that have shaped the patients present behavior. Most of us have at one time or another experienced a dream, be it a nightmare or a pleasant walk on the beach either way, it was always believed that dreams encompass a coded message that might be expressing our hidden wishes, things that happened in the past or even predict the future.

There have been many attempts to unravel the secret hidden behind dreams and so far the most famous of theories of interpreting dreams from a psychodynamic and psychoanalytic perspective is Freuds theories on dream interpretation. Key concepts of Freuds psychodynamic theory are primarily concerned with internal psychological processes, importance of childhood experiences, existence of the unconscious motivation, existence of ego and superego and the existence of defense mechanisms such as selection, distortion transformation inversion. Displacement and other modification of an original wish. Lema wright (1995) explains that these modifications make the original wish acceptable to the ego even If the wish, before being modified is unacceptable to the waking conscious. However there were also other psychodynamic theorists which include Jungian and Adler, who are known as neo Freudians they where Freuds contemporaries and as such were developing their theories at the same time as Freud. Each influenced the other, although they both took different directions in there therapeutic approach. According to the Jungian theory, wholeness is a major factor of importance, both men and women have aspects of the opposite sex.

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